Baking with Hinna

"Hey, Hinna! A couple of days ago you said you wanted to make blueberry buckle with wild blueberries. I got some blueberries at the store and thought maybe I'd surprise you."

"You did?!"

"Hmm, these won't be as good as wild blueberries, but better than nothing!"

"Yeah, sorry about that. I thought maybe making blueberry buckle would make you feel more at home though. Will you show me how to make it?"

"Absolutely! I'll need to do some conversions first so we can make a human sized buckle."

"Let's see, we should probably make the recipe 300 times bigger."


"Okay, let's get started!"


"First we mix together the butter, sugar, and egg"


"Then we stir in the milk and dry ingredients..."


"Go on and add your blueberries to the batter."

"Now spread the batter in the baking dish..."

"In a separate bowl, mix up the topping with your hand. You should probably have a human do this part unless you want to be covered in butter, sugar, and cinnamon. Don't get me wrong, it sounds like fun to me too, but I didn't want to take a bath so had the Bunny Lady do this part while I directed."

"Then sprinkle the topping over the batter..."


"And just pop it in the oven! I think 40 minutes will do it."


"Here it is, all beautiful and delicious!"


"So, what do you think?"


"It's amazing! Kind of like a big blueberry muffin cake with bits of heaven on top."

"Exactly! I love to cook and bake but I'm practically famous for my blueberry buckle amongst my pixie brethren."

"Do you think we should share the recipe on the blog?"

"Yeah! Both the human size and the pixie size!"

Hinna's Famous Blueberry Buckle (human size)

1/4 C butter, softened
3/4 C sugar
1 egg
1/2 C milk
2 C flour
2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
2 C blueberries

Topping:
2/3 C sugar
1/2 C flour
1/2 t cinnamon
1/3 C cold butter, cut into half inch cubes

Preheat the oven to 375 and grease a deep dish pie plate. In a medium mixing bowl, stir together butter, sugar and egg. Pour in milk and add flour, baking powder and salt. Stir just until everything is combined, then gently fold in the blueberries. Spread the batter (will be very thick) into the prepared dish. To make the topping, stir together the sugar, flour and cinnamon. Use your fingers to rub the butter and dry ingredients together until you have pea sized pieces of topping. Sprinkle over the batter and bake about 40 minutes or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.

Yield: 8 servings (or about 2400 pixie servings)

Hinna's Famous Blueberry Buckle (pixie size)

1/4 smidgen butter, softened
3/4 smidgen sugar
1 egg
1/2 drizzle milk
2 smidgens flour
2 pinches baking powder
1/4 pinch salt
1 blueberry, diced into 1 mm cubes

Topping:
2/3 smidgen sugar
1/2 smidgen flour
1/2 pinch cinnamon
1/3 smidgen cold butter, diced into 1 mm cubes

Follow the same directions for the human sized buckle except bake it for only about 2 minutes.

Yield: 8 servings (or about half of a bite for a human)

No More Bandages!

"Are you ready to be free of bandages?"

"YES!  They're itchy and constricting and the band aid goo is driving me bonkers!"

"Okay, here we go..."

"TA DA!"

"THANK YOU!  You don't realize how great it is to be healthy until you aren't."

"Congrats on being bandage free, my tiny friend.  High five!"

"Victory Charlie Brown dance.  Come on, dance with me!"

"Celebratory frozen margaritas"

"Ahhh, limey tequila.  Delicious."

"Indeed.  So, now that your body's all healed, how long do you think it will take your hair to grow back?"

"You said your hair grows really fast, but your noggin is still pretty shiny looking to me and it's been a week and a half.  You don't even have any fuzz yet."

"I'm not really sure.  Usually it does grow fast and I have to trim it every few days.  I've never been bald before though so maybe it's different when my head's been shaved?  I'm sure it'll grow back eventually.  In the meantime, I think I'm rockin' this hat pretty well."

"Yeah, and if you end up being bald forever I'll make you lots of different hats!"

"Just nothing too infantile.  I look young enough already and it drives me nuts when people call me cute.  Puppies are cute.  I'm a grown pixie, dammit!"

"Okay, okay!  I'll be sure not to call you cute!  Hey... if you don't mind my asking, do you have any idea why you have red hair?  You said all the other pixies in your tribe are blonde.  I don't know how pixie genetics work but it seems pretty weird for red hair to just spring up."

"There's no mystery.  My grandma caused quite the scandal when she was a young woman and fell in love with a man from a traveling band of pixies.  Their way of life was much different from ours and they were a different race of pixie entirely.  Granny's beloved even had flaming red hair.  Everyone in our tribe was opposed to the marriage because he was so different, but Granny married him anyway.  None of their kids had red hair and none of my siblings do, but apparently I won the genetic lottery.  Lucky me."

"So, did their love end up triumphing or what?"

"Not exactly.  Pixies from my grandfather's tribe weren't really the type to settle down.  A couple years after they got married, he went out for firewood and never came back."

"Aww, poor Granny!"

"Yeah, I know.  On the one hand, I know what it's like to be stuck in one place when you just want to GO, but abandoning his family was a jerk move.  Granny got remarried to my Gramps though and they seem  pretty happy so it turned out okay."

"Well, I'm happy for Granny then.  And from what I saw of it, I think your hair is beautiful so I can't wait until it grows back!"

Hinna Meets the Bunnies

"So, I see you like rabbits."

"I love them.  Aside from being hopelessly cute, there's just something about them.  They're nice (mostly), funny, and very loving if you're patient, gentle and let them adjust to you in their own time."

"How did you end up with so many?"

"Well, we started out with only one, but then we wanted to get him a friend.  The next four were all rescues!  We didn't really mean to get them, but they needed homes.  Do you like rabbits?"

"They're my favorite animal. When I was a kid my sister and I found a baby bunny hidden in the grass and we raised him ourselves.  He used to let me ride him.  He was a wonderful rabbit, but then he got eaten by an eagle."

"Yikes, that's terrible!"

"Yeah, it definitely was.  I miss him a lot."

"Do you want to pet one of them?  Let me grab Rory.  He's the calmest one.  The others are named-"

"I know their names already.  I have to admit something, hope you don't think I'm a creep...  Before the cat incident I used to sneak over and hide in your raspberry bush when you'd bring your bunnies outside to play in the grass.  Watching them was so much fun and I learned their names that way.  Always just called you the Bunny Lady.  I thought you had to be pretty nice if you had so many bunnies."

"Uhhh... that is admittedly a little... unexpected... but I'm glad my rabbits made you happy.  Just curious, why did you think I'd be nice because of my rabbits?"

"Come on, they're bunnies!  Cute, fluffy, delicate, sensitive.  Anyone crazy enough to have 6 of them in their living room has to be nice.  I doubt their are many jerkwad bunny freaks out there."

"Good point. Well, I'm glad you think I'm nice.  So, what do you think of Rory?"

"He's so soft!  I just want to squeeze him!"

"I know the feeling!  They're all really friendly so feel free to visit them whenever you want."

"Thanks so much!"

"You're going to be my steed, aren't you?"

How I Got Here

Hinna here.  I've been putting it off but the Bunny Lady (as I call the lady of the house) said I should probably tell my family what happened the day the cat attacked me.  She's right, you all deserve an explanation.  Here goes.

For anyone else that's reading, I need to give a bit of back story first.  I'm from a very small tribe of pixies in interior Alaska.  We number only about 150.  Other groups of pixies have come and gone, but we're the only ones who have managed to survive in this place that's frozen and white 7 to 8 months of the year.  The main reason for this is that every single pixie in my tribe has very light blonde hair and pale skin.  Our diminutive size and light coloring allow us to avoid detection as we move around outside in the winter.  I am the only member of my tribe that isn't blonde.  To make matters worse, my hair isn't just brown or even black.  It's RED!  And I have a lot of it to boot- or at least I do when my head hasn't been shaved.  As the Bunny Lady noted in her first post, none of the birds or other animals around here are this color and I stick out terribly.  To keep me safe, in the winter my family has always made me stay inside where I won't be seen and possibly injured (or worse).  The only way I've ever been able to leave our home after the first snow is by sneaking out.

Now for what actually happened.  My entire family (all 10 of us) had planned to go out and hunt for the very last of the wild blueberries.  It's a yearly tradition.  This is something I've always enjoyed because I LOVE blueberries (blueberry buckle, anyone?) and it's usually my last time outside before the long, long winter.  Also I love birds so I was going to stop by the human neighbor's bird feeder to see if any slowpoke robins hadn't migrated yet.  But the first snow fell during the night so my family made me stay home while they hunted berries.  With winter arriving I knew it was my last chance to get out because there's always at least one relative at home during the winter (I seem to be the only one of us that ISN'T a homebody!).  I just had to get outside one last time so I decided to risk it and go visit the bird feeder anyway.  This ended up being a very bad decision because apparently a cat was watching the bird feeder too.

You know what happened next.  I hope you all can forgive me!  Believe me, I feel like a complete moron.

Up and About!

Fantastic news!  Hinna is well enough to get up and move around!  No more being stuck in bed, the world is her oyster, she can go wherever she wants... or... Okay I guess she could just watch TV.

Day Three of Recovery

Well, I'm happy to say that Hinna's feeling a bit better today.  Her wounds are still healing nicely.  Her little brother expressed an interest in seeing the wound.  This is for you, Beagan:

 

I only have sushi band aids and have to cut them down to fit!  They're working great though.

So far she's awfully quiet.  I'm hoping she'll start talking a bit more soon because I'm sure she has lots to say!  She can move around more now but I'm making her stay in her bed still. Thankfully, there are a number of things one can do when stranded in bed, like read (thanks, Miranda!):

Or beat me at tiny homemade checkers:

I know Hinna's family is very worried about her but I promise I'm taking good care of her!

Day Two of Recovery

Good evening!  Hinna's still pretty under the weather so I'm typing for her again.  Good news is that so far her wounds don't look infected at all.  She's pretty zonked out because I've been medicating her with very tiny doses of Tylenol (she said it's safe for pixies and that they use the same thing for pain) but she's resting comfortably.  I crocheted her a little hat to keep her head warm and used my extremely meager sewing skills to make her a sleeping bag.  Hopefully it's more comfortable than a dish towel in a bowl.  Miranda over at Miranda Wandering was so sweet and sent her a stuffed bunny to snuggle with.  She's mostly interested in sleeping still but really seems to like the bunny. 

I'm trying to think of things to entertain her with once she starts feeling a bit better because I think she's going to be stuck in bed for a while and I don't want her to go stir crazy!  Any ideas?