Trip to the East Coast

Last Monday, we came home from a week long vacation in the east coast. We flew into Boston, drove up to New Hampshire and spent the week there. We drove to Vermont a couple times as well.

The first day, we spent the whole day on the plane. Or, most of it.

The second day, we drove up to New Hampshire. It was about a two hour car drive. When we got there, we got a tour of the barn that was a two minutes walk away from our friends house (where we were staying). That night, we all helped make dumplings for dinner.

The third day, I went with one of our friends to the barn for a day. I wasn't able to ride that day, but I did get to help out, take pictures, and watch the other riders do cross country jumps.

 

On horse back, cross country is a long course of jumps which might include logs, ditches, large obstacles to jump over, and water, which your horse has to wade through.

We swam in the pool later that night, and after dinner played games outside.

On the fourth day, I got to ride. I was the only western rider out of the group of girls in the riding camp, the rest rode english.

Here is a picture showing a western saddle and an english saddle. Sorry the english saddle in the picture doesn't have any stirrups!

Usually, only English riders jump, because their saddles are better designed for jumping. I did a few low western jumps on a horse named Jaws. 

That afternoon, we swam in a pond.

On the fifth day I tried out riding English and did a couple more jumps. The stirrups on an English saddle (where you put your feet) were a lot thinner than on a western saddle, and my feet kept sliding out of them. Also, the English saddle doesn't have a horn, so it was weird at first, not having anything to hold onto while I was mounting.

On the sixth day, we watched one of our friends and several of the horse campers do a horse show. We saw them do cross country and jumping. Afterwards, we went mini golfing and swimming at another pond, with several small water falls.

On the seventh day, we had a lazier day of watching Olympics (go America) and filming a video we have wanted to make for a while. 

On the last day, we did a quick trail ride. I got to ride Jaws one last time. He had been a very good boy all week.

   

He's the tallest horse I've ridden. 17 hands!

On our way to the airport, we stocked up on these delicious maple candies you can only buy in New Hampshire. 

Yum!

An unlikely cat treat

Sorry this picture of the kitty boys is so blurry. It's of them begging for a treat. Coale (back left) is a proud carnivore. If you show him a vegetable or fruit to sniff, it will offend him. The only fruit he will eat is pumpkin.

 It turns out, a little canned pumpkin is fine for cats. Even a little good for them. Too much can cause diarrhea though.

Even though our cat's have been eating pumpkin for a long time now (Every time we make something with pumpkin in it, the kitties get a little bit of pumpkin), it still surprises me that our might hunter Coale likes a plant food.

Vegan Mini and Mickey Pancakes

Last Sunday, Kira and I made pancakes with a frozen strawberry banana spread kind of thing for breakfast. I was going to blog sooner, but with all the craziness with Buddy, I didn't.

Vegan Pancakes and Frozen Banana Strawberry spread:

Ingredients:

Dry:

1 cup of dairy free milk

2 tablespoons of olive oil

2 tablespoons of maple syrup or sugar

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Wet:

1 cup of Whole Wheat Flour

1 tablespoon of baking powder

1/4 of a  teaspoon of salt

Instructions:

1. In one mixing bowl, mix the dry ingredients, in a separate bowl, mix the wet.

2. Pour the wet into the dry and stir. The original recipe says to wait five minutes before putting the pancakes on the pan, but we didn't do that and our's turned out very fluffy anyway.

3. Let the pan heat up. We used a low medium heat on our stove. Make sure the pan is hot enough to sizzle a drop of water before adding the pancake batter.

4. You can use as much batter as you want per pancake, but Kira wanted mini pancakes, so we used a 1/8 of a cup measure of mix per pancake. Cook the pancake until golden brown on each side.

5. Eat the pancakes.

We made mini pancakes. We made Mickey ones too! Pancake art.

And for the Strawberry Banana spread...

Take about 10 frozen strawberries

1 1/2 frozen bananas

Blend in blender or food processor.

If you want more of less of one frozen fruit, you can adjust the recipe. It's not very exact as you can tell.

Blend in the food processor for a long time. I almost gave up, and my mom had to help. 

Not so Red Velvet Cupcakes

This weekend, my sister's and I made Vegan red velvet cupcakes. Unfortunately, we were pretty much out of red food dye. We were only able to use about three drops before we ran out. So the cupcakes looked like a slightly pink/ish brown. But they still tasted good. The cupcakes were light and fluffy and the frosting was tasty.

Vegan Red Velvet Cupcakes:

Ingredients:

Wet:
1 cup of soy milk or other non dairy milk of choice
1 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar
1/3 of a cup of canola oil
2 tablespoons of red food dye (yeah, we definitely didn't do that)
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
1/4 of a teaspoon of almond extract
1 teaspoon of chocolate extract  We left this out and our cupcakes were fine

Dry:
1 1/4 cups of whole wheat flour
1 cup of granulated sugar
2 tablespoons of cocoa powder 
1/2 a teaspoon of baking powder
1/2 a teaspoon of baking soda

Directions: 
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees 
2. Whisk the milk and vinegar and let curdle
3. Put the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a large mixing bowl and stir
4. Add the rest of the wet ingredients + the curdled milk
5. Stir the wet and dry ingredients with, something you can stir with.
6. Don't over mix or the "the cupcakes will turn out gummy- small lumps are okay"
7. Fill the cupcake liners about 3/4 of the way, the cupcakes rise a lot. Supposably, this will make 12 cupcakes (it did for us) but you never can be sure
8. Bake for 18-20 minutes until the center is not gooey when a toothpick is inserted
9. The recipe says to do otherwise, but we just threw em in the fridge

Frosting:
About 3 1/2 ish cups of powdered sugar
Enough soy milk to make the frosting the right texture
A bit of lemon juice to add a cream cheesey flavor
You could add ground cashews to make it taste more like cream cheese, but we didn't. Soak them for a  while (the longer the better) and blend before adding to the frosting
(Sorry the instructions for the frosting are so vague, we changed it a lot and didn't keep track of how much stuff we added in.)

Directions:
10. Whisk the stuff together and and more stuff if it doesn't look right ;)
11. Frost your cupcakes. Eat like five of them right then. 

The original recipe is at: http://www.food.com/recipeprint.do?rid=412578


Unfortunately (on a completely different topic) Buddy got sick on Sunday afternoon. He seemed fine at first, but wouldn't eat. I sat with him for maybe an hour afterwards and he was pretty sick. He is now a lot better, but still wouldn't eat this morning. We took him to the vet and got some blood work done, so I am waiting for the results that will come tomorrow. The vet gave him an anti-nausea shot, and now he is eating again!

Fruit themed cupcakes

My sisters and I made cupcakes.

Lemon vegan cupcakes and lemon frosting (different color fruit topping and food dyed frosting)

Cupcakes!

My sister and I made vegan chocolate chip pumpkin cupcakes. Okay, she made the cupcakes, I put them in the oven and made on of the frostings.

This is the frosting I made.

She put did a chocolate frosting.

Wings learns what "cookie" means

 Wings the horse loves horse cookies. And now, she knows the English word for it.

 One time, she was standing at the top of the mare pasture, eating her breakfast hay.

Natalie: "Wings!"

Wings: (looks up, acknowledges I called her, goes back to eating).

Natalie: "Bucket!" *'buckets' are buckets filled with grain and usually a supplement or medication of some kind. Most horses love to eat their buckets. Wings likes her bucket*

Wings: (Turns around from her hay. Pays attention.)

Natalie: "Cookies!"

Wings: (leaves hay and speed walks down towards me.)

Another time she had just recovered from an injury to her leg and we wanted her to walk and trot around the arena to see if she was all the way better. Wings got really excited (she hadn't been exercised for a while before) and started cantering. We were worried she would hurt herself, but she wouldn't stop.

Natalie: "Wings!"

Wings: (Ignores)

Natalie: "Wings! Stop! WINGS!"

Wings: (Still ignores)

Natalie: "Cookies!!!"

Wings: (Slammes on the brakes, turns around, and walks toward me expectantly)

Our trip in France

This was what we did at the airport with cool brand new suit cases.

I've blogged about our time in England, now I'll blog about our trip in France.

After we took the Chunnel to France, we found our hotel and went out to dinner with our cousins (all of which speak French). At the restaurant, we met a friendly black and white kitty that liked to be petted. 

After our dinner, we took a longer walk home and stopped at an ice cream place. I got a Mango sorbet (Mango in French is spelled Mangue). By the time we got to the hotel, we were all exhausted. I usually take a while to fall asleep, but that night, I instantly fell asleep. 

They next day, we met up with our little cousin's grandparents and walked through a garden, rode on a carousel, got more sorbet, and saw the Eiffel tower. Later that afternoon, we said good-bye to our little cousin's grandparents and rested at the hotel for a while. That evening, we went on a boat and bus tour and saw the Eiffel tower along with a more detailed tour of Paris. We got back to the hotel at 11pm, so again, I easily fell asleep.

We found a smoothie place for breakfast the next day and took another train to the countryside. It was a four hour train ride. When we got there, we got the rental cars, and drove to our rental house. France's countryside was very lush and green looking and smelling. It was also humid. The green humid smell reminded me of Texas

It wasn't very hot outside that night because although it was 10pm, it was sunset. But our house had no air conditioning. I got ready for bed and tried to fall asleep in my sisters's room, one of the five bedrooms (each bedroom had two beds). The covers were very thick in her room, so after an hour of going around the house to find a place to sleep, I found a comfortable bed.

The next morning, we went to a village to explore. The first thing we did was buy a bunch of bread. My cousin bought a stick of butter and some cheese. It was much hotter than the night before outside. So we waded in a nearby creek/river (I'm not sure, some body of water). We tried to catch the little fish that swam in the shallow water, but it didn't work. 

After that, we had lunch in a gardeny restaurant, were we met our third cat in Paris (the second one was a white kitty we saw near our yard, she was nice but shy.) This kitty was mostly black with long hair. During lunch, we had a minor accident with stinging nettle, I won't say who it happened to, but just so you know, honey helps the stings. 

We visited one more village and took a short walk around it. Since it was getting really hot and we were all melting, we left quickly. But not quick enough to avoid learning that a) the only air conditioned building in the village is closed on Tuesdays (it was a Tuesday) b) there was a gift shop with a really cool inflatable dolphin that we bought, and c) that there was a really good ice cream stand with sorbet for the vegans. 

We escaped into the air conditioned cars and drove home to cool of in the pool, but not soon enough to save the cheese and butter from… melting all over the car. 

That day in the pool, we named the dolphin Dorsee. I wanted to call her Dorsal because it seemed like a good dolphin name, but everyone started calling her Dorsee, and the name stuck. Me and my sister became more successful at riding her. I eventually learned how to jump off the edge of the pool and mount in mid air, but our cousin had trouble 'successfully' riding her. Having Dorsee made the pool a lot more fun.

Another cool thing that happened at the pool, was our little cousin learned how to swim by her self with water wings. While her mom was videoing her swim to her dad, Dorsee (because one of my sisters threw her) photo bombed the back ground. In the background, you can probably see a flying dolphin. 

The rest of our trip was similar to the first day. We explored villages and castles and swam in the afternoon. On the second day, we visited a medieval castle and found a rope dangling down from the ceiling. All of the kids and my dad climbed it. I was surprised I could climb it. When I took gymnastics (I was like 6) I was terrible at rope climbing.

Unfortunately, our trip zoomed by, and we had to say good-bye to our cousins. But over our trip, I learned a lot more French than I knew before. I learned about 32 new words and/or phrases in French. 

After the countryside, we visited the Eiffel tower.

We were monkeys even on the Eiffel tower.

Apricot harvest

The apricots are back again. Now they're ripe. We harvested a bunch last Sunday. Now we're almost done.

Here's a picture from our first harvest.

This was the end result of our harvest. This wasn't even all the apricots. We had about 25 pounds from the one Sunday morning harvest. My mom's rough estimate of how many pounds of apricots we harvested total over the last week was about 75-80 pounds. LOTS of apricots, and they all ripen at once. We are making crisps and freezing apricots to make jam later.

New apricots coming!

Last year we had so many apricots and plumbs, we made jam, ate them plain, and gave some away, and there were still a lot left. We recently ate the last jar of apricot jam on a delicious new kind of cookie my mom made.

Now, I miss eating the apricots. But they're coming back…

Our apricot tree is in bloom!

Are They Really Supposed to be Doing That?

Our kitties are always causing trouble and when we aren't looking at them, they're usually doing something bad. Here are some of the things they have done caught on camera.

Coale is on the top and Noel is on the bottom.

I wonder what would happen if…

Let's catch the hamster!

Okay Buddy.

No, I'm positive I'm allowed to be up here.

(Even though Motormouth isn't ours)

No, I'm sure the horsey won't mind that I'm in his breakfast.

Let's eat him!

Not surprisingly, Buddy would not leave the counter that he's not supposed to be on while I wrote this.

Lots of Apricots

Our apricot tree made a lot of apricots. We were only able to pick about half of them, and this bag isn't all of our apricots. We had multiple of these sized bags full of apricots.

We made apricot crisp, and we also made apricot jam. We have LOTS of apricots

Buddy. Boy, The Mighty Hunter

This is Buddy, the mighty hunter. He is very playful and tolerant. He also believes that any food that comes out of a can and that we won't let him have, must be delicious. In the picture above, he is very proud of the "prey" he is holding.