My birds were having a hissy fit this morning! It was 9 degrees and they wanted breakfast, but someone was sitting on their dining room table! He wouldn't scare away by clapping your hands so E finally threw a boot at him and he ran under the porch and finally left the birds alone. He is one of our cats, one of the two kittens that showed up last July 4th, with their momma. He is a pest, getting under your feet, in the way as you try to walk! but if he gets my birds, I don't know what I will do with him!

I stopped in the local St. Marks Mission store one day this week and bought a bread machine cookbook for 25 cents. I made a Potato Bread recipe that was perfect! It was well worth the quarter I paid for the book and there are at least a dozen more that I want to try too!
Here is the Potato Bread recipe:
2/3 cup potato water
2 1/2 tablespoons of margarine or butter (no need to melt butter or margarine first)
1/2 egg (use either one yolk, one egg white, or two tablespoons of egg substitute)
1/3 cup mashed potatoes
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups bread flour ( had to add about 2 tablespoons extra, once it started kneading as it was too sticky. Flours are different, humidity makes a difference too).
1 1/2 teaspoons yeast

Boil 1-2 peeled potatoes. Save water to use in bread. Mash potatoes without butter or milk and cool to lukewarm.

Put in bread machine pan according to your machines specifications. Mine requires the liquids first, with flour, then yeast last.

We had the grandsons last weekend. We picked them up from on our way home from our Thanksgiving Day dinner at Lebanon with E's dad and assorted family members. The boys are 8 and 4 years old in October. Since we don't have an extra bedroom, one slept on the couch and the other one on the cot in the living room. They stayed an extra night so they could both have a turn sleeping on the cot! E had that week off from work, so he was here with them when I had to work on Friday. He made them waffles for breakfast which they loved. I had to work on Friday so I brought my little guys (3 year old twin boys) home to spend the day at our house. We made M&M cookies, while the 8 year old helped E take care of the animals, get the eggs and split some firewood with the log splitter. Try making scratch cookies with lots of little hands all wanting to help! They all got to stir and put in ingredients, and of course eat raw dough and M&M's! They had a ball! On Saturday we took them to Wonder Lab in Bloomtown. They didn't want to leave, but we had to meet their Mom, who met us half way and picked them up.
It sure was a whole new experience to have little ones in our house. It was noisy but fun, when it is usually so quiet here. We will surely have them again! Their Mom says 'you can have them any time!'