Burt and Ivy are very happy to be back after their long and totally unplanned absence. They spent most of the month of January in storage while His Madness and I tried to fix some household catastrophes that seemed to happen all at once. Most of the problems were fairly minor but unfortunately, they needed to be fixed immediately.
Then, just when we were catching up and things were getting back to normal, it all fell apart at the seams again! Or joints, in this case.
Fortunately, His Madness morphed back into his Mr. Fix-It mode and managed to reconnect Ivy's pelvis with her spine using dowels and duct tape. It worked like a charm.
This wasn't the first time her skeletal structure has fallen apart and it probably won't be the last. For now, Ivy is back together and ready for more adventures but maybe they won't involve the stairs anymore. At least she has her appetite back. After her reconstruction, she was craving the restorative powers of a sweet pumpkin treat.
Her choice of snacks got HM thinking about pie but there was a huge obstacle to doing any baking - the oven wasn't working!
I would have just gone to the store and bought a pie but HM likes to make stuff so he opted for one of the "refrigerator" type recipes and baked the crust in the toaster oven.
He had never attempted a chocolate cream pie before and thought it would be fun to give it a try. Plus, with all the necessary ingredients on hand he could avoid a trip to the store. With our normal winter temperature hovering around -10 degrees F. before factoring in the howling wind, chocolate was his best option (but then, isn't it always?)
As it turned out, this recipe for Chocolate Cream Pie is long, complicated and very messy.
Which was totally okay because it produced a delicious result, even without a stove.
As for the broken oven, finding someone within a hundred miles who would fix it was impossible. We were ready to start shopping around for a new one when HM took a look on YouTube. After watching a few videos, he ordered new burners and igniters, then fixed it himself. All it took was a few days to get the parts and a couple hours to install. Who knew? Well, obviously not the people in the repair department at the store where we bought it!
Thanks for stopping by, see you soon!
