Apple Mint Salad with Candied Walnuts

Inspired by a salad recipe from Chef Michael Smith's Family Meals cookbook, this take was brought about by my family's tastes. The original doesn't have romaine or dried cranberries, and uses pumpkin seeds instead of the candied walnuts. John isn't fond of too many carrots, and Kevin doesn't like raisins in salad so I thought the changes would make them more inclined to eat it. With a little

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LAST Giveaway: Gift Basket From Real Women of Philadelphia

This is the very last give basket I'm giving away from Kraft as per my contract with them, and you are all welcome to join in and see if you can snag it for the holidays!

Only Canadian readers can enter and one will be picked at random to win the basket below. This contest will be open until December 13 th, 2014. I'd like to know what you've been baking!






Have fun!


a Rafflecopter

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Homemade Veggie Burgers with my Blendtec Blender

For years, my family has loved veggie burgers but we've never found one that we absolutely adore and stick with. There was the one that was made with nuts, which was good but kind of expensive to make, pre-made ones from the freezer section that we found salty, and some that seemed tasteless.

A good veggie burger can be hard to find, friends. I'm not the kind of girl who seeks a veggie burger

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Peanut Butter Cookies with Nordic Ware Products!

I've never really liked peanut butter cookies. Their dry, crumbly texture has never been appealing to me and I hardly ever bake them-that is, until I discovered this recipe. Moist, chewy, and with a crunchy sugar coating, these cookies are absolutely delicious. You could skip rolling them in sugar and try drizzling or dipping them in chocolate, but whatever you do I'm sure you'll love these. We

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Win a Gift Basket From Real Women Of Philadelphia

As some of you know, I've been spending my time working with The Real Women of Philadelphia as an ambassador. I'm creating recipes using various flavours of cream cheese and writing for their site as well as creating recipes.

You may want to hop on over there and check out some of these oatmeal bacon waffles with cinnamon brown sugar cream cheese and sauteed apples.




I'm just saying.

Kevin

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Thai Steak and Noodle Salad

For years, summer was the same routine; I'd be off work and home with Kevin, where we'd spend lazy days doing everything from picking berries to picnicking at the beach, eating ice cream, and taking off for road trips.

Those days feel like a lifetime ago. Well-they are. We no longer live by the ocean. Kevin, once a small child, is now practically an adult and obviously has his own life, which

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The Canadian Cheese Rolling Festival

I love cheese. If there is something competes with my love of chocolate or coffee, it would be cheese. Creamy brie, sharp cheddar, spicy pepper jack; I love them all! Well, good cheese. I've been known to call processed cheese 'plastic' and refuse to eat it.

Yesterday I ventured into Vancouver for lunch at Forage in the Listel Hotel on Robson Street, where I got to visit with the people from BC

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Eating my Words

I owe you all an apology. Seriously. If ever you have read my blog and thought I was out of touch with reality a bit (or even a lot), by making loads of from scratch meals every single night of the week and saying if you really wanted you could too (oh dear, I cringe at this), I'm so sorry.

Really sorry.

This summer I got a new job. It's something I haven't done for a very long time and

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Lime Chili Corn

Out in Chilliwack, the fields are full of corn all in various stages of growth. Some are short, some look ready to harvest, but regardless-as a local, you get used to watching the fields being sown and later on, the little corn shacks popping up all over town as the farms sell off bags and bags of the sweet stuff.

Even before we lived here, we knew the corn grown in the Fraser Valley was the

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Raspberry Picking at Maan Farms

The very first piece I ever wrote and sent to in to a national magazine was after Kevin and I spent a day on the beach near Campbell River, BC. Walking along the sea wall, we found a huge blackberry bush and picked the juicy, sweet fruit until our fingers were purple-his more because he ate the berries instead of placing them in the bucket. It was a bittersweet moment that day, mostly because we

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Bacon Wrapped Spiced Beer Can Chicken

Sometimes I think I'm the only person in the world who doesn't have a BBQ. This always posed a challenge when I wanted to make something like beer can chicken-and besides, trying to balance a chicken on a can just seemed like a bad idea.

A few months ago, I was invited to the premiere of the Chicken Squad trailer and was gifted a Master Chef beer chicken roaster, which makes the process so much

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Low Sugar Rhubarb Cherry Jam

It's been awhile since I wrote last. No reason, really; I'm still cooking a lot, but somehow none of it made it here. Honestly, I'm not really sure why. Let's fix that shall we?

Some time ago, my friend Alexis began posting about Pomona's pectin. I had trekked out to Alexis's house last year to teach her how to make jam and while it was gloriously fun, Alexis pointed out how much sugar my

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Blendtec Blender Cookies

I never, every thought that you could make cookies in a blender. The very idea goes against everything that I've ever known about baking, along with idea of making brownies in it. So weird, but at the same time, it works, right?

These cookies are a little healthier than what I usually make, with the addition of whole oats, flax, and whole wheat flour. It does make for a cookie that is a

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Rhubarb Cherry Crumble

Fruit crisp? Crumble? We use the names interchangeably in our house for a warm baked fruit dessert topped with an oatmeal, flour, sugar and butter mixture. The fruit combinations are endless! Rhubarb has not always been my favorite fruit, but paired with cherries, it goes from ho-hum to downright amazing. I could eat this for breakfast, but for dessert with a scoop of ice cream it's absolutely

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Scrumptious Smoothies and a Blendtec Review

I've always liked smoothies, and when the weather gets warm I often forgo my usual lunch fare and begin blending up all kinds of smoothie combinations. Smoothies are great; they're portable, I can drink them on the go, the cold drink is perfect in the summer when it's often too hot to eat much, and when fruit is in season it is a great way to take advantage.

The arrival of the Blendtec to my

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Strawberry White Chocolate Scones with Lemon Glaze

Some time ago, I was at a bakery and tried a sample of their latest offering; a blueberry lemon scone with bits of white chocolate in it. As I nibbled, I began thinking that I could make these at home. I have a tendency to do this; almost like it's some kind of challenge, to figure out how to decode what they've made and create my own.

Local strawberries are just hitting the markets right

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Eggs, Cream Cheese, and New Blenders-Oh My!

It's been a busy few weeks over here. Between creating recipes for BC Eggs and writing things up for Philadelphia Cream Cheese, I haven't been posting a whole lot here-but WOW have I been churning the stuff out in the kitchen.





Over at Philadelphia Cream Cheese, there's a whole bunch of ideas for using your spreadable Philly on anything BUT a bagel. On BC Eggs you're going to find chocolate

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Contest! $100 in Groceries, a Dinner with Me, a BBQ, and more.

I've been recruited to assist a super special, top secret (or maybe not?) squad dedicated to de-bunking some pervasive myths that keep floating around. Myths about something you probably eat.

There's a lot of misinformation floating around, you see. Information that has been put out there that is simply just not true. Did you know that 64% of British Columbians believe that hormones and steroids

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Baked Chicken with Herbs and Shallots

Roast chicken is a huge hit in my house, but honestly sometimes I don't want to wrestle with a whole bird. On busy weeknights I also don't always have the time to roast a whole bird, and this recipe has come to my rescue a few times. It's so simple-just a bit of butter in a pan, herbs, garlic, shallots, and chicken. The butter makes the chicken skin go crispy, the shallots caramelize, and the

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Create the Best Egg Hunt

Easter egg hunts are one of my favourite things about the holiday.When Kevin was little we'd have egg dying parties in the back yard (see tips for your own party over at BC Eggs), ending with a giant hunt for all the kids. As kids get older and gone are the days of bubbles, the treats may change but the thrill of the hunt doesn't. Keep reading for my best tips on creating a hunt to remember!

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Spring in the Valley

You can tell it's Spring in Chilliwack when the scent of blossoms is tinged with the sour notes of manure, as tractors plow up the wet Earth in fields around town to get ready to seed. This morning, a flock of sea gulls followed one such tractor, swooping and diving behind it; likely feasting on the worms being dug up from the rich soil.

On the playground, worms have been working their way out

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Books: Starting From Scratch

Reading has always been one of my favourite pastimes. As a kid, I could polish off a 100 + page novel in just a few days. Books were hidden under my textbooks, my pillow, and I'd even read while walking home. Once someone became so concerned that I wasn't watching where I was going that they called my parents.

Years later, I read cookbooks, magazine articles, and websites just as voraciously.

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Spicy Chicken Almond Stirfry

I have this huge jar of almond butter sitting in my fridge that I bought at Costco months ago when Kevin expressed an interest in eating the stuff, and sure enough, he's barely made his way through it. Do your kids do that? Do they ask you to buy something, and then there it sits forlornly in your pantry until you have to either eat it yourself, throw it away, or donate it? I'm not that fond

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Chocolate Hazelnut Sandwich Cookies

These cookies are amazing. In fact, so amazing that when I stood in the kitchen filling the buttery disks with Nutella, the smell wafting from them was so overpoweringly wonderful that I couldn't help but grab John by the hand and drag him over to the counter.

"Smell," It was more than a command. An invitation, of sorts, More like, please smell these cookies because oh my they make me want to

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Mexi Pasta Toss with Windset Farms

I love fresh, crunchy vegetables. In our house, cherry tomatoes are eaten by the handful on their own or with slices of cheese, and sweet peppers are munched on in lunches, dipped in hummus, tossed in salads, or just about any way you can imagine. In the summer, being veggi-fied (is that a word?) kicks into high gear and our fridge is always bursting with all kinds of produce. What can I say?

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Coconut Cupcakes with Dairy Free 7 Minute Frosting

I love cupcakes-more than making a whole cake, truthfully. I think it's because a large cake just feels like too much, somedays. You feel obligated to eat the whole thing eventually. With a family as small as mine, it seems like too much commitment to make a cake.

Cupcakes, on the other hand, are just little bites here and there. You can have one or four. Recipes can be halved, some can be

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Birthday Baby Vanilla Cheesecakes

Cheesecake is one of my most favourite desserts. Topped with fresh whipping cream and fruit or drizzled with chocolate sauce, if there is cheesecake in the house I'm eating it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It's just too hard to resist it's siren call from the fridge, calling me to sample yet more of it's creamy goodness.

A whole cheesecake feels overly indulgent to make just for myself;

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Mushrooms on Toast with Bacon and Thyme

Sometimes you just need something easy that can be whipped up quickly and doesn't create a lot of dishes. Our Spring Break was that way-a bit on the lazy side but at the same time, we craved something more than cereal for dinner. I've made this a few times and we have really enjoyed the Earthy, buttery mushrooms, salty bacon, and fresh herbs. When spooned over thick pieces of good bread, it's

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Hummus and Bacon Salad Wraps with Feta

Sometimes on the weekends I may have no plans for what I'm going to make for dinner, and instead rummage through the fridge and come up with something from the bits of whatever happens to be hanging in the crisper. Often, I find leftover salad makes a great addition to wraps-not only does it help me use it up before things go bad, but it's healthy too!

I never really thought of putting feta and

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Pan Roasted Chicken with Harissa Spiced Chickpeas

I'm always on the lookout for recipes that are fast, require little clean up, and are inexpensive to make. Just because I CAN create some fantastic thing that takes hours doesn't mean I want to-usually I'm just not up for the amount of dishes it requires unless it's a weekend and I'm in the mood.

Chicken is a staple in our house more than any other meat, and a new way to eat it always

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Talking About Tomatoes: Canned, Sauce, or Passata?

Over the years I've learned a lot about cooking with tomatoes and what to use when I'm making things from scratch. Believe it or not, it makes a difference in the outcome! Are you stumped over which kind of tomatoes to buy? Do you need tomato sauce or crushed when you make chili? And what's passata, anyway? What makes it so great?

I used to watch Food Network and could never understand why

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Red Wine Braised Short Ribs

I love short ribs. The problem is when I've looked around for ideas about how to cook them, the recipes are massive. Some call for entire bottles of wine, or 5-6 lbs of meat. I don't know about you, but for me, 6 lbs of short ribs would end up costing something like $30 and make so much food I wouldn't know what to do with it. When you have a husband who doesn't eat red meat and the teenager is

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Lasagna for Two

Sometimes, you want lasagna but you don't want a giant pan of it. Whether you're a student living by yourself, or maybe a couple and the kids will eat something different anyway, it takes a little skill to take something that's normally quite large and pare down the recipe to get a nice little lasagna all your own.

With Kevin away for the week, it's taken a bit of adjusting to pare things from

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Roasted Veggie and Farro Salad with Honey Lemon Dressing

Awhile ago, my friend Maria and I made a trek to Costco for household supplies and while we wandered the aisles of giant jars of peanut butter and cases of toilet paper, we came across someone offering samples of farro. I had never seen the grain at a store before, but here and there in recipe books I had seen the name. Farro is a nutty, chewy grain that is really quite tasty. We found it

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The Candy Meister

Over the last few months when I've gone to trade shows, I've occasionally run into the wonderful folks who own Candy Meister. Honestly, I've never really loved hard candies-maybe it's all the sugar and food coloring, but Candy Meister candy is different and I had to share my love of them with all of you.

All natural, gluten free, corn free and dairy free, products by the Candy Meister are

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How To Make Homemade Mayonnaise

Mayonnaise is a staple in many Canadian households. Whether we're slathering it on burgers, in sandwiches, stirring it into deviled eggs, potato salads or using it as a dip for French fries, many of us can�t imagine life without it.

What is mayonnaise, anyway? Unlike salad dressing, which is usually more
runny and sweet, mayo is an emulsion of oil, lemon juice, vinegar and
seasonings whisked

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Spicy Beef Empanadas and Chimichurri

On Sunday we spent the day hunkered down by the fire, staying warm and deciding not to go anywhere. The Olympic closing ceremonies were on, heavy snow was blowing in drifts outside, the roads were bad, so why not just stay home? Even though I had spent most of Saturday cooking, there were a few things left that I could fiddle around with, right?

Turns out hot, flaky, spicy meat filled

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Squirrels Removed, Owls Return

Screech owl cam’ viewers will be pleased to know that, although there's nothing to view yet, with the removal of the squirrels, the owls are checking out the nest box with increasing frequency. (Yeah, I'll probably graph it, but not at the moment.)

I have to hope that they won't actually begin nesting until March, as has been the case most years, because I still have to integrate a

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Removing Squirrels from the Owl Box

One unpleasant chore done: I've removed three very nice fox squirrels from the owl box. It always makes me feel like a bully and a scoundrel, but if the owls are going to nest in the box, the squirrels have to go. It's likely they'll be back in about a week, but the process of making the owl box feel like a dangerous place to be a squirrel is underway. In the meantime, when the owls poke their

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The Silent (Unthinking, Well-Educated) Majority

“Both the allegiance and socialization processes cause the educated to believe that what America does is right. Public opinion polls show the nonthinking results. In late spring 1966, just before the United States began bombing Hanoi and Haiphong in North Vietnam, Americans split 50-50 as to whether we should bomb these targets. After the bombing began, 85 percent favored the bombing while only

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Screech Owl Cam’ Attic Views Added

I’ve added live views from the attic camera to the Eastern Screech Owl Nest Box Cam’ main page. (If you don’t see the “attic” views listed among the other views, you may need to reload the page a time or two to get a current version of the page.)

Since we’re currently waiting for the hatching of the first egg (literally any hour now, if last year’s first egg time-to-hatch period is

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The Return of The Screech Owl Nest Box Cam’

With my thanks to everyone who helped make it possible, I’d like to announce that Chris’ Eastern Screech Owl Nest Box Cam’ is back from the dead and has even returned to its old home.

To the best of my knowledge, the first egg has not yet hatched (I’m guessing it will tomorrow), so, while I couldn’t share two weeks of brooding, I will be able to share all four weeks of owlet raising.

Tell your

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Owl Cam' Situation Report

Friday morning, I spoke about the owl cam' situation with a very pleasant member of the staff of the President's Office at the The University of Texas at Austin. The person knew exactly who I was from the start of the conversation, so the owl cam' must, as they confirmed, be getting some attention in the President's Office. I asked about the status of the situation, but learned only that the

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Screech Owl Cam’ Returns to Disappeared

The web server hosting the screech owl cam’ is non-responsive again, so we’re right back where we were yesterday.

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Screech Owl Cam’ Host Returns, But Not The Cam’

The web server used by my eastern screech owl cam’ has returned without explanation. However, I remain locked-out of the machine, and therefore cannot make the cam’ operational. Make of that what you will. It may mean nothing except that someone remembered that the machine has other important roles, like sending training reminders to campus researchers (just one of my many valuable services). (I

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Screech Owl Cam’ Once Disabled, Now Disappeared

An email received last night alerted me to a new development regarding my disabled eastern screech owl cam’: it has now been disappeared, as well. Where there was a web server still offering the content accumulated over the last 13 years (and the embarassment of days old “live” images from this year), now there is nothing at all. And still not a word of communication from whoever is responsible.

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What I Told BaggyWrinkle About the Owl Cam’

Reader/viewer BaggyWrinkle asked a good question about encouraging the restoration of the owl nest box cam’ in a comment about my previous post. I replied, but neither the comment nor the reply are displayed by default by Blogger (maybe that can be fixed, but I haven’t found the right setting). So, let me take this opportunity to hang a lantern on my reply to BaggyWrinkle.

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Screech Owl Cam’ is Down

My ability to update my eastern screech owl nest box camera web site was disabled around 10:15 AM this morning, and my access to the relevant machine also disabled, for reasons that have not been communicated to me. While the machine’s web server is still operating, there is no way to update the pages there to communicate this situation to viewers. Posting here is the best I can manage.

To the

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Egg no. 1 of 2013

The first egg of 2013 was laid sometime this morning, about five weeks ahead of last year’s schedule. Expect the Nest Box Cam’ page to be fully updated later today.



Also, I’ve seen Chris Cooley’s work on the new “Owl Nest Box” app for iPhone and (and, new for this year, iPad). It’s looking good, but work is still underway. Regrettably, quickly making last year’s app available on the App Store

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Owl Cam’ Goes Live for Pre-Nesting Activity

Owl Cam’ viewers can now witness the current pre-nesting behavior. With an owl consistently spending the day in the nest box, I’ve fired-up the nest box cam’, even though nesting may still be some weeks away, and have modestly improved the main page, primarily with the simple addition of the small, five minute, time-lapse movie from 12 hours earlier (it sits directly beneath the current five

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How Owls Turn Their Heads Without Tearing Arteries

Thanks to Ruth F. for this article on an aspect of vertebrate physiology that I'd never even considered: How Owls Spin Their Heads Without Tearing Arteries.

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Hum… Try, Try Again

The microphone in the nest box has been a source of maddening frustration ever since I installed it years ago. The problem has been a humming noise that comes and goes on a period ranging from hours to months, thereby making systematic debugging of the setup impossible. At its worst, the hum drowns out virtually all of the sounds the mic is supposed to be capturing in the nest box, and, more than

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Keeping Squirrels out of Owl Nest Boxes

I've been lucky this year and had no problems with squirrels in my screech owl nest box. Significantly, I think I know why.

Upper-left: Screech owl nest box in gray.Middle: Fox squirrel nest box in green.

Though I've seen fox squirrels taking an interest in my squirrel nest box at various times, for lack of built-in video cameras or other instrumentation, I remained unclear as to what, if

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The Best Screech Owl Photo I Never Showed You

Readers with long memories may recall my mentioning that I'd setup an experiment during the last week of my 2012 screech owl nesting. The experiment was a home-brew motion sensitive trigger for my digital SLR camera, with trigger and SLR mounted such that they could catch the adults as they flew back and forth from the nest box. (You can see the sensor in the photos; it's the white plastic thing

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Mme. Owl Spends the Day in the Next Box

Mme. Owl, in a move that I hope has nothing to do with impending eggs (it’d be about 10 weeks too early for eggs around here), spent the entire day of January 2nd, 2013, in the nest box, starting at 6:28 AM CST and ending at 6:01 PM CST. The movie below shows all of the portions that triggered automatic recording. (In future, I will allow movement in more of the nest box to trigger recording.)

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May 3, 2012: A Most Unusual Food Delivery

What makes this food delivery unusual? First it happened during the day. Second, it was a whole mouse (wondered where my bold bird feeder mice went to). Third, Mme. Owl was spending daytime outside the nest due to the heat, but showed-up, called to her mate, and eventually he arrived with this mouse, still in daylight, a time when screech owls especially do not want to be seen. So this is one of

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December 29/30 Mme. Owl Visits Again

Mme. Owl visits the nest box once again, complete with egg depression work. Not sure what more to say, except that, if all of these visits start to look the same, the frequency of them is well worth observing and recording. Also, at some point, we should witness the male owl call to his mate from the nest site, as part of, what I believe to be, the start of the mating ritual (“See: I found you a

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December 28/29 Nest Site Preparation

Mme. Owl stopped by the nest box at 6:04 AM CST to do a little nest site prep. That consists, as usual, of kicking around the bedding material to make a depression for the eggs she’ll eventually lay. Another means to the same end, not seen here, is for the female to push the bedding material around using her breast like the blade of a bulldozer. That behavior, however, may be reserved for looser

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December 27/28 Mouse Withdrawal

Whichever of the owls (I suspect Mme. Owl) deposited the mouse in the nest box last night (December 26/27) was back tonight to make the withdrawal. Think of it as getting dinner from the leftovers in the fridge.


December 28, 2012, 3:14 AM CST29.6 MB MPEG-4 movie.

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December 26/27 Owl Visits

There were two screech owl visits to the nest box last night, December 26/27, 2012.

In the first visit, at 1:54 AM CST, Mme. Owl gives herself away by briefly kicking around the bedding material, which is a classic female screech owl behavior: making a depression for her eggs (even though there shouldn’t be any until March).



December 27, 2012, 1:54 AM CST29.6 MB MPEG-4 movie.


The

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2012 Owlet Family Portrait

I gather some loyal followers have been waiting (and waiting, and waiting) for the official 2012 Owlet Family Portrait. Well, happy Christmas, and merry holidays; wait no more.




From left to right, that’s owlet 4, 2, 1 and 3 (ages in days: 25.16, 28.15 ±16 min, 28.2 ±54 min, and 27.19). Owlet no. 1 tested its wings on a number of occasions by flying away from the photo shoot, forcing me to

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Owls from the Archives: Being Pushed Around

Yesterday’s video showed the owlets, almost ready to leave the nest, competing for food deliveries. This video shows them a month earlier. A lot can change in a month.


April 23, 2012, 3:07 AM CDT16.7 MB MPEG-4 video.

Mme. Owl is seen here engaging in one of her routine brooding duties: shuffling and rolling eggs. The former you can see, at least for two eggs. The latter is being done

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Owls from the Archives: How to Get Fed

Here's something from the video archives that accumulated during this year’s nesting season: owlet food begging, and two food deliveries. As one of the owlets has learned, and demonstrates with the second food delivery, the best way to make sure that you’re the one who gets fed is to be the owlet nearest the entryway.


May 23, 2012, 9:21 PM CDT17.5 MB MPEG-4 video.

If you’re remembering

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December 20/21 Owl Visit

The owls (or at least one of them) continue to monitor the nest box. Since live owlets emerged from this nest site this year, it will be their first choice for a nest site this coming year. Therefore, they probably give it far more attention than any other cavity in their territory. It’s been a long time since I was able to gather data on the frequency of owl visits to their would-be nest site

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Owls Return After Nest Box Maintenance

Last Sunday, December 16, I brought the screech owl nest box down, removed the long-since unnecessary owlet rail in order to discourage squirrels, and gave the camera windows and compartment interiors a thorough cleaning, so the cameras could acquire clear pictures again. Also, as part of my eternal, and perpetually failing, quest to eliminate hum in the audio signal, I added some ferromagnetic

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“Apple, Customer Service; Customer Service…”

Apple’s MobileMe services, including the various web hosting services associated with homepage.[mac|me].com were shutdown at the start of this month. Apple, a company that has built data centers the size of small towns to support its iCloud Internet services, appears not to have been able to find any resources to keep its existing Internet services going (even after spending years integrating

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Owl Cam’ Acquires Real-Time Animations

Stealing Inspired by an idea from my old friend Chris Cooley, author of the Owl Nest Box app, I’ve created pages (for now, and 12 hours ago) that animate the last four minutes of activity in the nest. There’s nothing like animation to make even tiny motions clearly visible, so these new pages reveal that those times when nothing seems to be happening are, far more often than not, merely a

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Owl Cam’ Acquires -12 Hours Views

My eastern screech owl nest box cam‘ has acquired a new set of viewing options: The “twelve hours ago“ views. I see these as a major enhancement for everyone whose sleep schedule overlaps night here in Austin, and thus the owls’ period of maximum activity.


In the past, for instance, schools in the UK have been able to use this cam’ as an educational tool, but not (for the most part) schools in

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Weren’t All Those Quarters Enough?

Official sign on a gas station air compressor: “Feed Me Starving Children”

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The Screech Owl Cam is Live Again (at Last!)

The paint is still wet on the new OwlCam software, but an hour ago it finally gave every indication of working, so I put it into production and, voilà!, images from the nest box are showing-up on the web site every 60 seconds once again.

The new software or hardware could malfunction at any time, but I’ve been studying the software’s internal behavior and everything looks solid so far. Fingers

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Owl Status Report

A few people have asked for a status report. The owls and eggs are fine.

There. I hope you’re happy.

Expanding on that a little, we’re in the long, dull ~30 day incubation period. All four eggs look good (there’s been no opportunity to weigh or measure the last two, regretably). Mme. Owl is comfortable and, due to mild temperatures, can leave the box with some regularity, albeit not for long

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Egg no. 4 Happens

Egg no. 4 happened sometime today. Four eggs is the normal size for a screech owl clutch (well, a mean of something like 3.75 is, if memory serves, what Gehlbach came-up with), so this is probably the last of the eggs. Now, Mme. Owl settles into relentless incubation for the next 30 days, and then continues that task for some weeks afterward as she broods the owlets.

It must be mighty boring for

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Three Eggs and Half an Owl

Not a lot to report, because we’re still at three eggs, and Mme. Owl is still in brooding mode, as she will be until the owlets are about three weeks old (although nest box temperatures will affect whether she’s actually brooding at any given time - if it's hot enough in there brooding becomes redundant).

Are more eggs still a possibility? Yup, but for a limited time only.




Meanwhile (for the

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Egg no. 3 Arrives

Egg no. 3 was laid this morning sometime between 12:27 AM and 2:17 AM CDT, at which point Mme. Owl went into brooding mode. Meanwhile, her mate is doing a good job of supplying food, most of which appears to be caterpillars (a possible benefit of the natural tall grass, etc. that I've allowed to develop in my yard, especially around the nest box tree).

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Egg 1 and 2 Metrics

Mme. Owl made the mistake of spending the night out hunting, so I was able to do some basic science on her eggs while her back was turned.

I can't tell the eggs apart, so I can't say which is the first or second one laid. I can say the following: one of the eggs weighs 20.0 ±0.2 grams and measures roughly 36.44 x 31.75 mm, and the other egg weighs 20.6 ±0.2 grams and measures roughly 36.35 x

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Egg no. 2 Debuts

Visible for the first time at 8:13 PM CDT, egg no. 2 was laid sometime this afternoon (after 1:55 PM). Well done, Mme. Owl, and keep up the good work.




One of my screech owls once laid a clutch of six—as big as clutches come—and I’m still hoping to see that happen again, as rare and challenging for the parents (and owlets) as it is. That said, any clutch that produces healthy owlets is fine

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Egg no. 1 for 2012

I took down the nest box last night, March 25, not long after Mme. Owl exited for the evening. (Incubation of the eggs generally waits until the second or even third egg is laid, so Mme. Owl still has her nights free, provided they don’t become dangerously cold.) Debris deposited in the nest box by starlings was blocking the side vent (visible in the lower right hand corner of the far wall, a

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First Egg of 2012

Mme. Owl provides a glimpse of this year's first egg, not more than two hours after it was laid, I'd guess.

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Both Owls Roosting

You don't see the following very often: The mated pair of screech owls roosting in the nest box together. In my experience it happens only one day early in the nesting process, but it always happens. Pair bonding shortly before the stress of the first egg's arrival? Just trying it out for size? I don't know.
I had hoped to to encourage this behavior on the part of the male by adding the internal

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Would the Owner of a Small...

...striped, gray and white, large-eyed bird please come and claim it. It's filling my owl nest box.




Looks like nesting has begun, as Mme. Owl spends her first day in the nest box. The first egg is probably still a day or two away. I must now work to make the owl cam' operational at an even more frantic pace. Please bear with any delays.

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Busy Nest Box

They come and go by day...




...and they come and go by night.

The owls will win control of the nest box, but not before the starlings have made complete and utter pests of themselves, as long time viewers can attest. Also, the starlings continuously dump new bedding material into the box. I cleaned out the box this weekend to ensure that it wouldn't pile-up so high that it would block the

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FireWire 400 Devices Incompatible with FireWire 800 Macs?

If anyone knows of a solution to this, it'd sure come in handy.... I'm dealing with several converters that turn analog audio/video signals into standard DV video. All of them use the FireWire 400 interface, as is traditional for DV devices. My problem is that my Mac, a Mac Pro (4,1), has FireWire 800 ports. I've bought two different FireWire 400-to-800 adapters, both of which make the DV encoder

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Owls Preparing to Nest

A depression in my nest box's bedding material has suggested for several days that a female screech owl is planning on nesting there. Last night, I finally saw one of her visits, when (sure enough) her primary concern was moving the bedding material around to create a depression for the eggs that are on their way. This is normal pre-nesting behavior for a female screech owl, so it's a very good

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David Bamberger on 60 Minutes Tonight

My friend David Bamberger—who has been working since 1969 to restore the worst piece of land in Blanco County, Texas (and maybe the rest of the Texas Hill Country) in order to prove that what's good for the environment is good for the rancher, and vice versa—will appear on “60 Minutes” tonight as part a of piece on “hunting ranches in the U.S. that offer exotic big game species.”

David’s ranch

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Watch the Solstice Approach (and Recede)

As an equinox or a solstice (in this case) approaches, my year clock starts indicating the time of the event with increasing precision, using indicator arrows like the one shown below (each equinox and solstice has a unique arrow; this one is for the winter solstice).


While such arrows are visible year-round in the clock’s year ring, as the month of the event is entered an arrow appears at the

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Check Your Drug Interactions, Avoid Rude Surprises

I recently found myself in a situation in which an over-the-counter pain medication prescribed by one of my doctors began to poison me, and, given enough time, probably would have done permanent damage to some major organs I've come to depend on over the years. I didn't realize what was happening at the time, I just lost feeling in a section of one hand, as the pains that were supposed to be

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Wolfram|Alpha: How it Came to Be, What it Does, How it’s Done, How it Grows

I’ve been sending this link to people for a year or more. I think I’m overdue to make it available to everyone:Making the World’s Data ComputablePersonally, I found it fascinating and illuminating after being left clueless about what Alpha was by the industry press.Need some specific examples to understand how to use Alpha? See their examples page.And if you try Alpha and it doesn’t meet your

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Maintaining In-House Technical Skills

From Project Apollo: The Tough Decisions by Robert C. Seamans, Jr., pg. 84:When conducting advanced technical efforts, it’s imperative to maintain in-house technical skills of a high order. But high-grade technical personnel cannot be stockpiled. They must be given real rabbits to chase or they will lose their cutting edge and eventually seek other employment.

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The “Glass Teletype”

From TOG on Interface by Bruce “TOG” Tognazzini, pg. 131:Early computers used printers as their sole output. When programmers at various large traditional computer companies were first given monitors, they immediately duplicated the printer interface on their green, glowing screens, giving rise to the term “glass Teletype.” With this lavish investment of more than 20 minutes of design time behind

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The Intuitive Person vs. Western Education

From TOG on Interface by Bruce “TOG” Tognazzini, pg. 103:Western education is heavily biased toward intellect over intuition: Intuition is endowed with a perverse habit of delivering results most slowly when the need for speed is greatest. [....] Telling a bunch of kids to “think about it for a couple of hours, a day, a week—whatever it takes—then get back to me” just doesn't fit into our

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Goldilocks

From TOG on Interface by Bruce “TOG” Tognazzini, pg. 91:For those not well-versed in English folk story tradition, “The Three Bears” is the story of a young juvenile delinquent who breaks into a neighbor’s house, vandalizes it, and manages to kill herself while trying to escape. Good parents read it to their children, instead of letting them watch all that violence on television.

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The Cost of Imperial America

From War Is A Lie by David Swanson, pp. 284-285:

We are [...] proud, however, of shoveling huge piles of cash through the government and into the military industrial complex. And that is the most glaring difference between us and Europe. But this reflects more of a difference between our governments than between our peoples. Americans, in polls and surveys, would prefer to move much of our money

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The Syntax of Photography

From The Keepers of Light by William Crawford, pp. 6-7.[....] Are there "syntactical" rules of structure for the way we turn objects into photographs, rules that compel the infinite possibilities to fall along a finite line, just as there are rules for the way we turn concepts into statements? How you answer this question tends to determine how you approach the study of the history of

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Consultants

What’s great about hiring consultants is supposed to be that your organization has no committment to them. What isn’t much mentioned is that, by the same token, consultants have no committment to your organization.

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The Measurement of Misfortunes Revisited

A few days after posting Mark Twain and the Measurement of Misfortunes, I realized something obvious that I’d overlooked for years: The bad habit of seeking an external yardstick by which to measure, compare and disregard human pain and suffering—well examined by Twain in that quoted material—is the basis for a reductio ad absurdum.

The reduction is straightforward: If the pain or suffering of

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Mark Twain and the Measurement of Misfortunes

Ever since reading Mark Twain’s autobiography years ago, I have, with some regularity, found myself presented with situations that brought the following passage to mind. Another such situation arose recently, and caused me to search out the passage, as my memory had stored the lesson well enough, but had come up lacking in the matter of retaining the story sufficiently to pass it along properly

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All Branchers (and Owlets) Safe and Sound

All three branchers were sighted at the same time in the same tree (the tree in which I deposited owlet/brancher no. 5 after it left the nest on the 8th). The brancher that appeared largest had its own perch, while the other two (presumably owlets 1 and 2, who left the nest together on the 10th) were perched together on another limb. Those two had to cross perhaps 75 feet of "open" space (the

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Owlet Family Portrait and No. 5 Grows Up

I brought down the nest box late this afternoon to install the owlet rail. Fortunately, as I was in the process of assessing what pieces of its mount I'd have to replace, I discovered that (once again) I'd made a spare. So, the only part I actually had to replace was the branch that forms the rail. The old one would probably have been fine, but I tripped over it while owlet herding, and the rest,

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Owlets Four and Five on the 21st

Since acquiring owlet no. 4 for medical treatment, Sallie, my raptor rehabber friend, has acquired two more young screech owls, which she refers to as “screechlets” to distinguish them from the three great horned owlets, and four barn owlets she was also caring for on the night of the 21st when these photos were taken. One of the screechlets, now designated owlet no. 5, is young enough to fit in

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The Owlets on the 17th

As people following my notes on the screech owl cam’ page will be aware, on the 17th I brought down the nest box mid-afternoon in order to remove a worrisome build-up of what appeared to be fire ants (the small, vicious, invasive species we have here in central Texas; not the big, relatively relaxed natives that live further north in Texas). Needless to say, I took the opportunity to photograph

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