ELC Day 24: Popovers and a Pestilence of Squirrels

My menu has been rather monotonous, so I won’t bore you with details. I’ve been baking a lot – sometimes twice a day – and one new recipe I tried was for popovers. If you’ve never made them (I hadn’t), they’re very easy, tasty, and fun. They’re made with an egg batter, similar to a crepe batter, and baked in muffin tins. During their time in the oven they puff up into high, rounded, hollow domes, at which my daughter and I marveled as they baked. We had them at breakfast, but you could easily use them in place of rolls at dinner.
In the garden, I’ve harvested another serving of pole beans, and the occasional arugula for accenting sandwiches. The squirrels have been absolutely pestilential this fall; it must have been a banner year for them. Generally I regard squirrels with tolerance, if not benevolence, despite their semblance to tree-loving rats. Whatever their activity in the garden, they don’t eat the plants and so it’s never been an issue. However, this year there are SO MANY of them, and they’ve all decided that my neat, newly planted beds with their loose soil are the perfect place to store and/or forage for nuts. Numerous holes have been dug, even around my newest additions like the banana tree, butterfly bushes, and dill (they actually overturned that one with their digging). In the future I may have to apply netting so the seeds have a chance to sprout and grow.