Sheila's Posts

Even though cooking is not my forte, God does bless the concoctions created from incorporating leftovers I find in my refrigerator. This casserole is too yummy for me to not save the recipe where I can find it (if I print it out, I’ll probably forget where I put it ).

It’s basic, and most influential, ingredient is the hot Italian sausage made from venison and pork. The venison and pork used in the recipe for the sausage included in this casserole happens to be what my husband acquired (not from a store) and ground up.

(Click on the foods for enlarged views.)

The sausage’s ingredients:

25 lbs ground venison
15 lbs ground pork
7 tablespoons rubbed sage
7 tablespoons garlic powder
7 tablespoons coarse salt
5 tablespoons black pepper
4 tablespoons crushed red chili peppers
2 tablespoons allspice
2 tablespoons cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons dried crushed habenaro pepper

Directions for the sausage:

Course grind the venison and pork together.
Re-grind the meats with the spices included.
Wrap in plastic & paper for freezer.

The casserole’s ingredients:

2 lbs of hot Italian sausage
cooked corn cut off one cob
16 oz of creamed corn
3 large raw tomatoes, diced
1/2 cup of lightly sautéed onions, diced
4 cups of steamed broccoli, diced
1/4 cup of fresh dried basil leaves, crushed
25.5 oz of pasta sauce (I used Muir Glen’s organic garlic roasted garlic)
1 lb mozzarella cheese, shredded
12 oz whole wheat whole grain elbow macaroni (I used Hodgson Mill‘s)

Directions for the casserole:

Preheat oven to 350º F
Fry the sausage; the remove it from pan.
In that same pan, lightly sauté onions.
Steam the broccoli, then chop it up.
Boil the macaroni for 7 minutes, then drain.
Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl.
Fill the mixture into a 4 quart baking dish (15x10x2).
Bake uncovered for 45 minutes, then let cool for 5-10 minutes.

While it’s cooling, fix yourself a drink.
Wouldn’t a refreshing tequila sunrise look pretty next to a plate of a spicy sausage casserole? →
If you’re interested, Agavales Gold is an inexpensive, but yet tasty premium tequila.

Oh, yes . . .
I almost forgot about dessert!
What else but a homemade peach pie made from peaches off peach trees that grew in the garden by accident?
Someone must have thrown peach pits into the garden one year — causing two peach trees to grow along the inside of the garden fence.
How sweet the taste when you don’t waste!

I’m now thinking about Thanksgiving . . .
Who shall I invite for dinner?
Those who eat daily in my yard maybe?
Here’s a few from that rafter I think will be delicious to go after.

↓

“Hey! You don’t mean us, do ya?”

Now that I think about it, something that happened recently creeps me out. When my husband first told me yesterday morning what he saw near our house lying on the ground, I was sick to my stomach hearing about it. That’s why I titled this post as I did. If you get upset easily, quit reading this post here. If you read further out of curiosity and then get nauseated, be glad I have my limits as to what I would take a picture of.

Since my husband is the one who goes down to the garden, he is the one who saw something strange behind our smokehouse. It was a dead fawn on the ground. It’s back end was partially eaten. The odd thing is that its body had been lying there for two or three days. Either a bear or a coywolf killed it. What’s very creepy is that whatever captured it left it there. It’s not normal for a wild animal to not completely eat its prey (at least around here it’s not).

I heard this poor fawn cry for its life as it was being killed during the night it happened, but I didn’t expect to see any remains. The scream woke me up. I was too tired to know for sure what it was. It’s not unusual to hear an animal being killed periodically during some nights. What’s really awful is to hear it scream for a while, then stop, only to start again. One night I heard this horrible sound repeatedly for about two hours. I think it was a rabbit getting attacked. It’s just not what you’d expect after watching so many wildlife shows on television. Maybe for television they keep slow killings off the air?

I almost mentioned in my Middle of the Night Snack? post another awful story. I’m going to bring it up now because it too is creepy. I had a cat I raised from the time it was five days old. When she was three years old, I knew something was very wrong when she disappeared one night. The next morning I saw her, as I looked out my window, coming to my front door. I will never forget the look in her eyes. (I’m feeling very sick as I share this.) Something had eaten parts of her back end. She barely made it to the house. There was no way to save her life. She had already suffered too much for too long. All I could do was cry to my husband and plead to him to please stop her from suffering any longer.

The real world is cruel and harsh. How does a person get used to sleeping through such things, especially when being a light sleeper? I have to leave my windows open quite often. I can’t seem to turn off the pain I feel whenever an animal suffers. I could never be a veterinarian. I don’t have the stomach for hearing cries of pain.

Still in all, I’d rather live in the country than a city. People who scare me are those who think legal American citizens no longer have the right to bear arms.

My first camera was a Minolta SR-T 101. I remember having bought it on my 19th birthday in October of 1973. I was happily impressed by the prints from my first roll of film developed. I scanned one of those old (and now faded) prints to publish on a post called The Falls. A decade later, that camera was stolen (during the winter) from where I was living.

Towards the end of summer, almost two years after that theft, I purchased a Minolta X-700 to use for my college photography classes. Peter Correia was not only my instructor, but he was also my daughter’s instructor too when she took the same classes. I gave her my camera to use.

We both had numerous photos we shot, developed, and printed that were put on display in the college’s art gallery. I recently scanned one from my old collection to put into this post. It’s a photo I took of my daughter, a couple of months before she turned three years old, for class back in the fall of 1985. I forgot about it until she retrieved it back for me, after seeing it still hanging on Mr. Correia’s office wall, when she was his student. The print wasn’t protected, so it got damaged somewhat.

As you can see, the photo on the right is much less faded. It’s a scanned print of a photo my daughter also took for Mr. Correia’s class. It wasn’t until the beginning of March in 2006 when I bought the third camera in my life. It’s also my first digital camera, which I still have and use. Panasonic is its manufacturer. The model is a Lumix DMC-FZ30.

It’s a bridge digital camera and has a 12x optical zoom Leica lens and OIS (optical image stabilization, that I probably forget to employ most of the time). I’ve never used any other digital camera before, so I can’t say how I’d rate it against others.¹ This rugged camera is all I need to be content for taking photos. For over four years, it’s been dependable and does its job to my satisfaction.

All of my photos taken before March 2006 are prints from film. The others after those are digital images that rarely get printed. I like things simple and basic, so even though I tinkered around years ago with Adobe Photoshop Elements 2 for Windows to see what it’s like, about the only thing I might do with a photo anymore is either resize or crop one once in a while. I have no interest in starting to make any videos either.

[Edit added the next day] — Probably the main reason for my diminished interest in photography is because of the internet. When you’re financially unable to explore the world offline, it only leaves the option of doing it second-hand through the experiences of others who share theirs online. Take this morning for example; I was mesmerizingly lost in time from being stunned by the magnificent beauty coming through the images found on page after page of the blog Summit Stones & Adventure Musings.

¹I know cell phones can now do many things, besides taking photos and videos. However, I don’t have one; never have and probably never will. The desire simply doesn’t exist for me.

A vacation is leisure time away from work (time longer than several hours out of one day) devoted to rest or pleasure. Typically, people perceive work as paid employment. They might not go so far as to say that being unemployed is like being on a vacation, but few would be able to realize I have not been on a vacation in over 30 years.¹ My first day of vacationing, during the past 3 decades, began on June 1st, 2010 (actually it began when I left home the night before). Now that I’m back home and into my regular routine, I can clearly recognize what a vacation is and is not!

While I was on vacation (except for the stressful parts; e.g., motorcycle madness and thunderstorms while far out on a large body of water), I felt enjoyably alive for the first time since childhood! The area I live in, and have spent most of my life growing up in, is nothing like it used to be. Generally and straightforwardly speaking, those who have grown up and live in areas further north than a latitude of 42.66 (longitude 73-74 W) in New York State, are friendlier and nicer people (especially the women). I’ve found that to be true even in the northwest region of Maine. I’m not the only person who thinks so either. My husband’s friend, who has traveled often to these areas, also has this same experience.²

As soon as I’m back in my community, I recognize a lack of a welcoming spirit. When it is seen, it looks phony. In the north, people sit on their porches and wave to everyone passing by. They will freely open up and talk about themselves, along with showing genuine interest in the lives of newcomers. So, naturally, uptight people are a depressing thing to come back to.

Besides leaving behind the more pleasant attitude of those in the north, the clean air, quieter surroundings, and laid-back relaxed pace — all of which had me sleeping properly unlike I can remember having done once upon a time many decades ago — are also left behind. What I did bring back with me was a sunburn, poison ivy, and an infected ankle (from a cut done by hitting a rock underwater). While I was up north, those things didn’t bother me… probably because the daytime temperatures ranged between 60-72 degrees Fahrenheit and it wasn’t humid there. Being hit with the horrid heat and humidity (common for being further south and at a lower elevation level) exasperates whatever is already going to irritate the nervous system.

I knew about the outdoor skin cleanser Tecnu, but was too late in getting a bottle while up north for it to do much good against urushiol. A poison ivy wash that’s way better (and much more expensive!) than Tecnu is Zanfel, but I didn’t even know about it until a week later, which was the first time I ever used it (and it does work!). I think the itch and pain from the poison ivy and sunburn kept me from realizing my ankle was in pain from being infected and was swelling. I began taking doses of Colloidal Silver and also applied it to the cut. The swelling left by the end of the next day and the cut proceeded to heal. Besides those products I’ve just mentioned, a camping first-aid kit should also include: band-aids (maybe some butterflies too), a small bottle of hydrogen peroxide, antiseptic cream, sunblock, a tick removal spoon, tweezers, insect repellent (preferably Deet-free, like White Mountain‘s), and bee sting cure. You can do minor surgical procedures without a doctor!

Adding to the unpleasantries of being back, what I described enduring on the 4th of July, every bit of good that vacationing did for my health rapidly became undone! All I have left is my photographs to confirm to myself that I did at one time, not too long ago, feel alive and looked forward to another day. Now I’m back to working seven days a week at trying to keep from becoming exhausted from things like insomnia, sensory overload, and social isolation. The most depressing aspect of all this comes from learning how the horrible economy, along with an excess in human population (especially dangerous foreigners³) increasing and disrespecting nature with trash, is already showing signs of destroying what little beauty is left in the wilderness areas I (including my children and grandchildren) might have another chance to someday visit again.

¹I went on 3 trips in other years past, but they were not vacations. During those trips, I was working just like I do when I’m home. Work is to exert oneself by doing activity directed toward a purpose or out of necessity.

²Someone I once knew, who traveled around to different parts of the world throughout most of his life, told me that no matter what country it was, those who lived in rural areas were much nicer people than those living in urban ones. That was my experience also when I was in Central America in 1980. The “primitive” natives living on Volcán Barú in Panama were the civilized ones. Those who lived in the cities were nasty in comparison.

³My native “rural” community I continue to live in has it’s own fair share of malicious creeps too that have victims either speaking up years later or never reporting what they’ve gone through. I näively spoke up once about a horrible life-threatening incident I endured when I was young, to the detriment of my own life, and learned to never do that again.

This post continues from where Water Sights at Taylor Pond left off with its photos. For those who are new here, this Chi-Poo kayaking buddy of mine goes by the name of “Rascal.” I wish I could have gotten at least one picture of Rascal while the wind was blowing strong, because the back of her head looked so cute and funny with her ears being held up straight! Besides having to keep paddling against hefty winds, resulting waves wouldn’t allow me to focus on taking pictures.

These photos begin at the furthest end of the pond (southwest) from the main campsites. They reflect my journey back with Rascal. She wasn’t anywhere near as interested in looking around when we were going to the other end as she was when we were coming back from it.

(All shots are enlarged by clicking on them.)

Please tell your friends and family, who like to camp and/or boat, about Taylor Pond! As they say, “Use it or lose it.” If people don’t use this campground, those who love it (and would or could fall in love with it) will lose it.

This post continues from where Lean-to Sites at Taylor Pond left off, with my marveling over how wonderful the sound of a brook goes with hearing wind blow through trees and a loon off in the distance!

(All shots are enlarged by clicking on them.)

The above is towards the southwest.

The Catamount Mountains are in view.

The bench faces southwest.

My kayak is pointing north.

While on the same spot as in the second photo above, here I’m now facing south.

These three loons were at the opposite end of the pond from the main campground.

The above photo was taken in a southern direction.

This shot was aimed towards the northeast.

This post continues from where Tent Sites at Taylor Pond left off, with the mention that this campground needs campers or else New York State will keep it closed. These first three photos are from site #2; one that’s only accessible by boat or a long hike. It’s very remote and has a fair amount of open space.

(All shots are enlarged by clicking on them.)

All these last photos are from site #5; another very remote site that’s also only accessible by boat or by hiking in. It’s the only site that has a brook close by.

I can’t imagine anything sounding better than the brook that flows past this site, except for maybe the subtle addition of hearing the wind blowing through the trees and a loon off in the distance!

This post continues from where Taylor Pond is the Best! left off, with mentioning about a bat, a loon, and beavers following me while kayaking. These first three photos are by site #19; one that’s accessible by car:

(All shots are enlarged by clicking on them.)

These next couple of photos are from site #3; that’s only accessible by boat or a long hike. It’s very remote.

Site #3 is on a hillside and is probably one of the smallest areas for putting up a tent.

All the rest below are from site #4; another very remote site that’s also only accessible by boat or by hiking in:

Site #4 has lots of open space and room for a big tent. It’s the only site on the west end of this 4 mile long pond. After getting there, the wind and waves become calmer.

The Taylor Pond Campground might not remain open if there are not enough campers to provide sufficient income for New York State to keep it open.

This post continues from where West Before South left off, and hopefully now will reflect a little more enthusiasm. I was heading to the Adirondack Mountains, but had no idea where exactly would be the best place to stay. I didn’t feel like going from one body of water to another as seen in my post Yak’n the Daks. Since I was entering into this massive park from the northeast on State Route 3 this time (rather than coming in from the south on Route 30 as I did the last time), I couldn’t resist trying for a third time to find Taylor Pond. As soon as Alder Brook Road (Route 4) came into view on my left, I recognized it as being the way to where Taylor Pond is. When traveling southeast, Alder Brook Road becomes Union Falls Road, which then becomes Silver Lake Road (Route 1). Alder Brook Park Road also leads into Union Falls Road. I specifically mention those roads because I fell in love with them the first time I drove on them during my last trip there. I dream of living on such roads! Alder Brook Park Road is a one-lane dirt/gravel road that rarely has traffic. There are some houses on those roads, but they are far and few between. Anyhow, I was still frustrated over knowing that there should have been a State Campground at Taylor Pond, but the entrance to it was not visible when I drove past it twice just a short time ago.

The reason the entrance to that campground could not be known by someone who was never there before is because it was closed when I went past it before. The sign wasn’t up. I remember thinking that dirt road had to be it, but I didn’t go on it because I thought it could be someone’s driveway. So when I saw it was open this time by and the sign was up, I was excited! I had read about this campground in the New York Camping Guide and its description fit exactly what I was searching for! The photos on the DEC’s webpage for it don’t quite reflect how it looked when I was there. During my stay, the grounds looked less traveled. There were no RVs around. Only one tent was seen up. All the other sites were vacant.

(All shots are enlarged by clicking on them.)

I chose site number 19. It has its own private little nook on the shore; an ideal spot for my kayak.

Here’s Rascal just before she slipped off the kayak (for the first time ever) into the water. Her leash and harness help me to fish her out of the water quickly. Since then, she lost her desire to sit out on top of the pointed curved end at the bow.

I was informed by the guy who operates a private campground at the nearby lake (Silver Lake) that waves at Taylor Pond can exceed heights of 4 feet where the depth reaches 90 feet due to the pond being at the base of Catamount Mountain (visible in the photo with Rascal).

The main camping area is at the east end of the pond. Almost always, there is a fairly constant strong wind coming from the west.

The photo above was taken around 11 P.M. I’ll never forget how beautiful it was to go kayaking in the moonlight, especially when having the entire 4 mile pond all to myself!¹ A bat happened to like following me around that night. It kept swooping down a couple of feet over my head. It’s all part of the wonderful experience of being out in nature to enjoy the wildlife.

Earlier that day, a loon (pictured above) was following me around the pond. I didn’t realize it until I looked behind me and saw it a few feet behind my kayak. On Moosehead Lake, people on shore reported seeing beavers following me as I was kayaking during the thunderstorm which was also following me.

¹All the other campsites were vacant, which was another treat!

This post continues from where Moosehead in the Other Direction left off, with my having said enough about that lake. While traveling through Maine, it was evident that there were beautiful rest areas. Here are some photos of a rest stop along Route 150 (Harmony Road):

(All shots are enlarged by clicking on them.)

Since the weather was rainy throughout New Hampshire, it only seemed worth staying for one night of rest.

What could be more welcoming than seeing a “Bear Alert” sign upon arriving into the White Mountain National Forest?

I didn’t have my camera with me when I went to sooth my poison ivy itch in the brook of cold water nearby, that emptied into the creek which was also close by. If I had it with me, I could have taken photos of the fresh bear tracks (claws included) coming up the bank towards the camp area. The rain was on and off, but mostly on while I was there.

All the way across Vermont, it mostly rained. The ideal crossing to get across Lake Champlain and into the northern Adirondack region was by taking the Grand Isle Ferry.

I had no idea that while I was riding on this ferry and taking these pictures that an earthquake was being felt on both the west and east side of this long lake. The epicentre was approximately 56 kilometres (35 mi) north of Ottawa, Ontario. The quake was of a 5.0 magnitude, which is considered to be moderate. The effects were widely felt, because of the earthquake’s depth (estimates of which vary between 16.4 kilometres (10.2 mi) and 19.0 kilometres (11.8 mi)).

It was at this same ferry crossing location on January 30th, 2009 when one crashed full speed as coming in to dock. A ferry sure is heftier than a kayak. Every time I see water like this, I want to get in my kayak and explore (except when I know a thunderstorm may be coming!).

Even though this post is probably boring, it seemed worth including. Without it, a void would exist between my telling about being in Maine and then coming back to the Adirondacks again.