Guess what I’m doing tomorrow? I’m going to wake up at 6:00 am! And put warm clothes on!
Then I’m going to go outside!
Then I’m going to go over to the pig pens to see if there’s a mountain lion in the mountain lion trap!
p.s. I’m not in Hamburg this week. I’m back in Colorado, eating fresh peas off the vine while banging a tamborine to scare away things that want to eat me.
It’s not often that I can say that ricotta is as delicious as mountain lions are scary, but I’m saying it today. Chris, Jeff and I had a wonderful dinner at a mediterranean restaurant in Philadelphia on Thursday, and had a ricotta-based dip that was divine. It was rich but light, flavorful and fresh. It had a clear dairy taste and was a little herby. Amazing, and, unfortunately, well beyond my range of dip-making expertise (which hovers somewhere above from-the-mix ranch and below really good hummous, and which leans way too heavily on chipotle for interest.) We also had a salted caramel budino that was ridiculously good. I didn’t know what a budino was; it seemed like a pudding with a little crust on the bottom and caramel sauce on top. Yum. All in all, the meal (and the company) was terrific, and I am grateful for the fear with which I approach facing a large, wild, pig-eating mountain lion for helping me burn off those ricotta/salted caramel calories.
Background: yesterday morning, Dad found a partially-eaten pig outside of the pen where the 35-pound pigs are kept. The Dept of Wildlife came out, assessed the teeth marks and tracks, and said that the pig was killed by a mountain lion. They set up a live trap for it using the remaining carcass. This morning, there was no lion in the trap, but another pig was missing from the pen. A mountain lion trap is a big metal cage (like a huge dog crate,) that has a treat in the back and a trapdoor in the front that crashes closed when the treat is touched.
Update: No lion in the trap. A nice man came out this morning with several hounds and tried to track the mountain lion, but the trail was too old. Instead, the lion-hunting dogs spent a happy hour running up down and around, baying like their blood was on fire, and scaring a family of raccoons into practically crawling into my lap (by which I mean running across the lawn in broad daylight.) So, the lion saga continues and we’ll be up early tomorrow to check the trap and count pigs.
I feel especially vulnerable to mountain lion attack, as I have downed so much molasses this week that I am pre-basted like a turkey and, due to the pregnancy, I am a two-for-one special.