Guilt

I got up this morning and went to check on the results of the overnight storm. It looked like I’d been stood up. Maybe a half inch of fluff on top of a quarter inch of icy slush. This wasn’t a bad thing, as I’d left my snow boots in the car. I shoveled off the steps, retrieved my boots, and contemplated the fact that I’d forgotten to pick up bird seed yesterday. I had a Red-bellied Woodpecker, a Blue Jay, two Cardinals and a Cedar Waxwing looking pointedly back-and-forth from the empty bird feeding to me. I’ve got thistle seed coming out of my ears (no finches this year, for some reason), but I only had a little songbird mix left. I pried off the frozen roof of the feeder and dumped the last of the birdseed in. And I felt bad because I was sure they were counting on me.

This is all rather ironic considering I have little bit of a phobia of things that flutter.* Flapping wings whether they’re birds, bats, or butterflies instantly puts me in fight-or-flight mode. It’s a challenge not teaching this response to Sweet Daughter, but I try. So I feed the birds because it seems like the right thing to do, and I do like watching them from the other side of the glass, and for some bizarre reason, we don’t have a squirrel problem. It could be that the starling and crow problem we have (greedy buggers) keeps the squirrels away, but whatever.

Then I went inside to fix breakfast. Sweet Daughter requested waffles, and since the guilt quotient wasn’t high enough for the morning, I made these. From the 1961 Betty Crocker’s New Picture Cookbook, I bring you:

Richer Waffles

3 eggs
1 ½ cups buttermilk or soured milk
1 teaspoon soda
1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup soft shortening (fresh bacon fat is good)

Heat waffle iron while mixing batter. Beat eggs well. Beat in remaining ingredients with a rotary beater until smooth. Cook according to whatever works best for your iron, but I find I don't have to grease the iron first with this batter. (Ya THINK?)

Perfect fuel for shoveling out the driveway. Especially when the weather wienies are calling for another couple of inches of white stuff and 30 – 40 mph winds. Sorry, birds. Maybe I'll toss the leftovers your way.

*While looking here for whatever “flutterphobia” is called, I found this.

Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia - Fear of long words.

That's just mean.