{"id":7841,"date":"2013-02-21T20:01:25","date_gmt":"2013-02-22T03:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=7841"},"modified":"2013-02-24T13:33:29","modified_gmt":"2013-02-24T20:33:29","slug":"yep-that-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=7841","title":{"rendered":"Yep. That. Again."},"content":{"rendered":"

My friend read yesterday’s blog post and sent me a picture of a cake.\u00a0 A pig cake.<\/p>\n

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I was shocked.\u00a0 I was stunned.\u00a0 How did she know I needed a cake?<\/strong> I actually needed several cakes.<\/p>\n

One cake was to celebrate.<\/p>\n

We needed to celebrate because I am awesome.\u00a0 I know this because my receipt from the Teeter told me so.\u00a0 See?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I got $92.15 worth of groceries for only $26.42. I saved $65.73 in coupons.\u00a0 It’s Super Doubles at the Teeter!\u00a0 Woot!<\/p>\n

It’s true that the kids will be eating Golden Grahams for a while.<\/p>\n

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But they will also be getting treats that we never buy unless we have $1.50 off coupons and it’s Super Doubles week.\u00a0 Treats like this:<\/p>\n

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Treats that are perfect for… guess what?\u00a0 Cake!!!<\/p>\n

But that’s not the only awesomeness around here.\u00a0 I went down to the garden to add an extra tarp and some straw to the pen for the piglets.\u00a0 There might be freezing rain tomorrow morning.\u00a0 Again<\/em>.\u00a0 And what I saw made me laugh out loud.\u00a0 A gleeful, smoke-a-cigar-and-say-“I-love-it-when-a-plan-comes-together” laugh.<\/p>\n

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Because look what Pushy and Penny have managed to do in just 24 hours.\u00a0 24 hours!<\/strong><\/p>\n

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It’s a tilling party in the garden!\u00a0 And that certainly deserves cake.<\/p>\n

Plus, since the pigs were handling the garden work, I was able to get the seeds ready for the greenhouse.\u00a0 Don’t hate on my fancy seedling trays and homemade heat mats.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Only 53 days until the last frost date.\u00a0 Will your transplants be ready?\u00a0 Tick, tock, people, tick, tock.<\/p>\n

With the groceries and the gardening out of the way, I had time for a celebratory creation, made with the Cookies ‘n’ Creme drops we got on sale.<\/p>\n

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But the second cake was a bit more important.\u00a0 It was a Thank You cake.<\/p>\n

Special thanks were in order because Tulip, the magnificent milk producer, and Vanilla, Tina’s mother, are back.\u00a0 Remember them<\/a>?<\/p>\n

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Except now they are back to stay.\u00a0 Their owner is getting out of the goat business and she gave them to us in exchange for future pork shares out of Penny and Pushy.\u00a0 But not only did we manage a successful goat trade with her.\u00a0 She also agreed to take on Sampson, our 5 year old Delaware rooster.<\/p>\n

Sampson has been an incredible rooster.\u00a0 He always kept a look out for danger, broke up any infighting among the hens, and never, ever spurred or chased us or any visitors.\u00a0 But this year our secondary rooster, OJ, came into his own and took over the flock.\u00a0 Which would have been fine.\u00a0 Except that in the battle for dominance, he took out Sampson’s eye.\u00a0 And although Sampson tolerated OJ’s presence for the past 2 years (as long as he did his mating in secret or out of sight of Sampson), OJ decided Sampson had to go.\u00a0 He refused to let Sampson eat or sleep with the flock.\u00a0 He took great joy in chasing him mercilessly around the barnyard anytime Sampson came into view.\u00a0 And my handsome and mighty Sampson was reduced to cowering in the woods and running up to our vehicles when we pulled into the driveway, hoping for handouts.<\/p>\n

Which we gave him.\u00a0 Almost all of us kept pieces of dog food or animal crackers or bread crusts in our coat pockets.\u00a0 So that if we stumbled upon Sampson, hiding behind a flower pot, or cringing around the corner of the coop, we had something to share with him.\u00a0 But we knew it couldn’t go on forever—-he was dropping weight and his vision was hindered with only one good eye.\u00a0 And he just happened to come running up for some peanut butter off the scraps spoon while my friend was over here discussing our goat trade.<\/p>\n

His tale of woe had stirred her heart and, even though she didn’t need a rooster and didn’t even have a desire to have one, he was settling in over at her place by that evening.\u00a0 And woke up in a new coop with a whole flock of girls entirely to himself.\u00a0 Don’t be fooled, people.\u00a0 Despite our ability to butcher meat we have raised ourselves, or put down an animal failing to thrive, farmers are sometimes just animal rescuers covered with thin layer of practicality.\u00a0 Good luck, Sampson, and many thanks for his new home.<\/p>\n

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All of that good trading and goodwill deserved a special cake.\u00a0 So we made my version of the pig cake to give to my friend.<\/p>\n

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Oh, my pigs weren’t as cute.<\/p>\n

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But they were yummier than the marzipan ones in the picture.\u00a0 Marzipan.\u00a0 Blech!\u00a0 Why would you use such an awful tasting decoration when you can make pigs with candy melts, egg shell molds from the eggs you just used in the cake mix, and a ziploc bag as a pastry bag.\u00a0 Don’t hate on my fancy decorative bakeware.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Since I was already 2 cakes down, I figured just one more sweet treat was in order.\u00a0 After all, it’s my weekend to work.\u00a0 In the freezing rain.\u00a0 Surely, those of us required to spend Friday, Saturday, and Sunday away from our loved ones deserve a bit of chocolate to commiserate over.\u00a0 Besides, I had to make the celebration cake out of vanilla ingredients since Middle doesn’t like chocolate.\u00a0 What’s the point of baking if you aren’t making something chocolatey.\u00a0 Or chocolatey and peanut buttery.\u00a0 Like, say, with the Reese’s pieces candies from the Teeter sale.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ah, now that’s something worth showing up at work for.\u00a0 See you at Station 2, everybody!<\/p>\n

In the end, we had an amazing trifecta of treats.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But I can’t take all the credit.\u00a0 I had trained monkeys<\/span> helpers.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Of course, it was my friend, KT, who put the idea of cake in my mind in the first place.\u00a0 And it was exceedingly kind of the Teeter to donate cake decorating supplies.\u00a0 But I suppose that’s enough about pigs and chocolate.\u00a0 Really, 2 days in a row is pushing the limits.<\/p>\n

After all, this blog is not just about pigs.\u00a0 Or chocolate.\u00a0 Or pigs and chocolate.<\/p>\n

Except when it is.<\/p>\n

Meh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My friend read yesterday’s blog post and sent me a picture of a cake.\u00a0 A pig cake. I was shocked.\u00a0 I was stunned.\u00a0 How did she know I needed a cake? I actually needed several cakes. One cake was to celebrate. We needed to celebrate because I am awesome.\u00a0 I know this because my receipt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7841"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7890,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7841\/revisions\/7890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}