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Maple Syrup: 40 Tried & True Recipes
Paperback – Lay Flat, February 11, 2020
by Corrine Kozlak (Author), Kevin Scott Ramos (Photographer)


Today we finished reading our first cookbook of the year. \o/ We bought this just a couple weeks ago at the small farm show. Our friends at Golden Ridge Farms had their maple root beer and also these cookbooks. I had just seen a different book that was mostly history and only a few recipes, so when I spotted this one, I pounced on it. The front matter includes a table of contents, Preface, Tree to Table, Maple Syrup History, How Maple Syrup Is Made, Maple Syrup Grading, Sugar Shack Fun, Do-It-Yourself Maple Syruping or Backyard Sugaring, and Cooking and Baking with Maple Syrup. The recipe chapters are Breads and Breakfast, Entrees, Sides, Sweets and Desserts, Appetizers and Beverages. The index in the back does include both ingredients and titles, but is not greatly detailed.

( Read more... )

Today is partly cloudy and cold.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a large flock of sparrows, two starlings, a male cardinal, and a wren.  The sparrows are widely foraging on the ground under bushes. 

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 2/1/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

I refilled the hopper feeder.

EDIT 2/1/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

I put out more birdseed.

EDIT 2/1/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

I am done for the night.

Here is my card for the Valentines Bingo over in allbingo. The fest runs from February 1-28. (See all my 2026 bingo cards.)

If you'd like to sponsor a particular square, especially if you have an idea for what character, series, or situation it would fit -- talk to me and we'll work something out. I've had a few requests for this and the results have been awesome so far. This is a good opportunity for those of you with favorites that don't always mesh well with the themes of my monthly projects. I may still post some of the fills for free, because I'm using this to attract new readers; but if it brings in money, that means I can do more of it. That's part of why I'm crossing some of the bingo prompts with other projects, such as the Poetry Fishbowl.

Underlined prompts have been filled.


VALENTINES BINGO CARD

Read a Book	Praise	Interracial or Interspecies Love	Marrakesh in Morocco	Take a Class
Taking It Slow	Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming USA	Experimentation	Can't get no satisfaction	Nonphysical Passions
Validate Yourself	Helplessness	WILD CARD	Lac Rose in Senegal	Breaking the rules
Nonsexual Touch	Respect Limits	Sedona in Arizona USA	Denial	Fantasies
Odd couple	You are so busted	Do What You Love	Such a gentleman	Enjoy Some Private Time

Today we went on an unplanned outing that proved quite productive.

( Read more... )

I have made bingo down the B and G columns of my 1-1-26 card for the Public Domain Bingo Fest. I also made 6 extra fills.

( Read more... )

Last call!  Today is the final day for nominations in the Rose and Bay Awards.  If you haven't already made your nominations, do it now.

Today is cloudy and cold, spitting a few snowflakes.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a large flock of sparrows plus a male and a female cardinal separately.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 1/31/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

I added more birdseed to the hopper feeder.

I've seen two starlings.

EDIT 1/31/26 -- I saw a female downy woodpecker at the suet cage.

I am done for the night.

Snowflake Challenge: Friending Meme

The post-Snowflake Friending Meme has been such a rousing success that we’ve made it a permanent fixture here at the Fandom Snowflake Challenge, so come and make some new friends!

Just copy and paste the template into a comment; include as much or as little info about yourself as you want.

After you've done that, go through and read other people's comments and either strike up a conversation here, or take your mutual interests to each other's journals and new, shiny friends.


See also the Snowflake Wrap-Up Post with a poll.





Names I go by:
ysabetwordsmith, Ysabet

Other Places I Can Be Found:
Livejournal: https://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/
My Websites: http://penultimateproductions.weebly.com/
http://greenhaventradition.weebly.com/


The fannish platform(s) I am most active on is/are: Dreamwidth, LiveJournal, Weebly


The ways I find my Fandom Joy are: (writing, reading, reccing, betaing, cheerleading/prereading, art, podficcing, mixing, modding, graphics, fanvids, commenting, meta, filk, picspams, etc.)
writing, reading, reccing, reviewing, modding, commenting, meta

Link(s) to my Masterlist(s):
Articles and Essays
Books Written
Love Is For Children landing page
Serial Poetry page
Shared Worlds page

Note that my author site on Weebly is currently being updated, so new landing pages for series and threads are appearing.

I also put a lot of energy into communities. I make lists of active communities for followfriday. One of my recurring posts this year is Community Thursdays. I also run multiple communities:

allbingo hosts a new bingo fest each month. All formats and lengths, all fandoms and original works are welcome. Join us for the Valentines Bingo in February!

birdfeeding is all about birds. If you're into feeding, watching, photographing, drawing, or talking about birds then drop by. Some of us are also into fictional birds ("Crebain, from out of Dunland!") so there's already a tag for that.

crowdfunding is mainly for original work, but some folks welcome fannish prompts because they can use those for freebies. It runs a Creative Jam on the third weekend of each month. The February theme will be "Not Giving Up."

goals_on_dw supports New Year's resolutions and other goals. Currently the most popular is Fannish 50 with 52 participants, so check there to find links to fannish content. Do you post your fannish content here? Sign up for Full Content on Dreamwidth to grow your audience. The tag for signup posts has some for reading, writing, art, and nature goals along with Community Thursdays and other stuff. Additional masterlists appear in the sidebar.

newcomers offers many resources on how to use Dreamwidth and where to find things here. It helps new people get the hang of this platform in hopes that they'll stick around. Established users are welcome to join for supporting newcomers, so if you like making new friends and helping folks, come check it out. Have you written materials that explain how to use DW? You can link or repost them in this community. Do you want to help new users? Sign up for the Dreamwidth Welcommittee.

I'm also an administrator for some of The Freaks Club family of communities including thefreaksclub, tfc_musicianships, and first_nations_freaks.


Fandom(s) I enjoy: The Avengers, Dragon Prince, Good Omens, Harry Potter, High Potential, Jurassic Park, Lucifer, Magnificent 7, Nimona, The Sentinel, Sherlock Holmes, Star Trek, Star Wars, Tolkien, X-Men.

My favorite people/characters in this/these fandom(s) are: I am pretty flexible about pairings and often like multiple characters per fandom.

Pairing(s)/grouping(s) I ship within this/these fandom(s) is/are: I particularly like teamfamily.


The type(s) of fanwork(s) I consume the most is/are:
(fic/podfic/art/mixes/graphics/fanvids/meta/filk/picspams/etc.)
Fiction, art, and meta. I like poetry when I can get it, too.

Fanwork tropes/clichés I enjoy are:
I listed a few favorite tropes here. I also enjoy afterlife, alien sex/gender dynamics, alpha / beta / omega, amnesia, anthropomorphic, asexuality / aromance, canon divergence / fork in the road, disabilities, enemies to friends/lovers, fixit, fluff, gen, hurt/comfort, genderbending, kink, mpreg, racebending, relationship repair, sedoretu, sex, skin hunger / touch aversion, soulmates / soulbonds, time travel, trauma and recovery, troll romance / quadrants, wingfic, and xenolinguistics.
Recs on Dreamwidth or sites other than AO3 are welcome for any of these: canon, fanwork, original, yours or anyone else's.
If you are into these things, a lot of them appear in my fanwork and original work.

The type(s) of fanwork(s) I consume the most is/are: (fic/podfic/art/mixes/graphics/fanvids/meta/filk/picspams/etc…)
Fanwork tropes/clichés I enjoy are:


Non-fandom things I enjoy: (hobbies, interests, job, etc.)
I am a professional wordsmith with writing, reviewing, editing, and other activities.

I enjoy activism, birdwatching, cooking, crafts, ethnic studies, gardening, gender studies, history, intentional community / neighboring, linguistics, magic, Paganism, science, spirituality, thinking, tikkun olam, and worldbuilding.

I love talking about big-picture issues and deep topics. I care about S-risks and X-risks. I never stopped asking "Why?" and "How does that work?"


I post/want to post mostly about:
* Reading (22,659 posts)
* Writing (21,144)
* Cyberfunded creativity (18,816)
* Poetry (16,722)
* Networking (14,504)
* Fishbowl (13,153)
* Fantasy (11,644)
* Weblit (8,006)
* News (7,948)
* Personal (7,486)
* Poem (7,358)
* Nature (7,252)
* Science fiction (6,686)


Other things I want to share about myself:
One thing I am good at: Language. I have a linguistic coprocessor in my head. It takes up space normally devoted to other stuff like facial recognition. But I can learn new sounds, hack any language I can hear or read, pick up words without half trying, write poetry in languages I don't actually speak, and build model languages for fun. I am linguistic SillyPutty.

Other things I want to share about myself: I fly my freak flag proudly. The mainstream has never been a good fit for me and is rapidly moving farther away. If you are a fellow freak and/or the mundanes frequently say you are not human, my blog is probably a good match for you. If you like the direction the world is going at present, you probably won't like my blog.
I post daily, often multiple times. If you are frustrated by low activity on Dreamwidth, here is an area of high activity. If you are easily overwhelmed, this may not be the blog for you.

People have expressed interest in deep topics, so this list focuses on philosophical questions.

I'm dropping in a different topic today. Recently I posted an article and a video about a cow performing versatile tool use.  It turns out that cows also have prehensile tongues, and having a manipulatory appendage correlates with both tool use and intelligence.  Does this information change how you feel about cows?  How they should be treated?  Your choices to use cow products such as milk, meat, and/or leather?  Why or why not?  Discuss.