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It's been so long since I posted anything of substance.

I'm not sure the following could be considered "substance" or not, however.

Friday 7/9, Kevin, with his Special Olympics swim team, were honored at the Bowie Baysox game. They got a pre-game introduction, two guys got to throw out the first pitches, and many team members got to run out to the bases with the team. Kevin got to run out to second base. He stood there during the National Anthem, then sauntered back while the rest of the kids ran. That's my boy.




All the fertile office co-worker's wives have given birth and I'm still working on the last baby quilt. I have 10% of the blocks done (of 20) so I have a long way to go.

I'm trying to stay on top of the laundry instead of leaving something in the washer for a couple days or having two or three baskets of things that never got folded while warm and now need to be re-fluffed.

The kids have been back from camp for over a week now and I'm almost done with their laundry. The Boy brought back some clothes with someone else's name written inside. I still need to put them in the post.

I've been listening to BBC/Radio 1 a lot via the Internet and satellite radio in the new car. The Internet plays in real time, but Sirius time-delay's the show by five hours. Kinda messes with the mind a bit.

Wednesday 7/7 was our twentieth anniversary. Dan and I took the day off from work and played golf, then had dinner at Cityzen downtown at the Mandarin Hotel. Yum.

I took a golf lesson Saturday morning from Troy Beck. I'd totally lost the ability to hit fairway woods from the fairway and wasn't getting any real distance from my longer irons. She said I was standing up too soon because I was off balance, and that I was crowding my hands/arms. She had me stand farther back from the ball and gave me drills to practice keeping balanced. By the end of the lesson I was getting 125 yards out of my 7 wood!

It rained 1.38" on Saturday.

Back in June I went to Columbus/OSU for a Perl conference. Perl is a programming language, not a misspelled adornment. I was born and went to college not an hour away from Columbus in Urbana. Some of my college friends were still in the area so I had an opportunity to catch up with some of them. I had lunch with Piper who had lived in the dorm room across the hall from me and is now working in Columbus.

One night I drove out to Urbana and met up with Martha and David at the college. It's really a university now, but I'm having a hard time changing the name in my mind. We walked around campus remarking on all the changes made in the last thirty years and reminiscing about fellow students. My grandmother taught biology and botany there and had her lab/classroom and office in a lovely old building, Barkley-Baily Hall, which since has been turned in to plain classrooms, probably in the English department. The college built a new science/math building in which my grandmother is supposed to have a memorial classroom, but Martha hadn't seen it on a previous visit and I didn't look for it myself. While I was in town, I also drove past my grandparents old house and visited them at the cemetery.

I was supposed to meet up with another friend, but she didn't make it back into town in time. I was bummed. I hadn't seen her in years.

Fern went to ice skating camp for a week and came back pretty jazzed to skate at Worlds in Boston at the end of the month. Now she has a week to cram in all the lessons she can before she competes. Most of her events have seven girls in them. I sure hope she does better than last, I don't want her to be devastated and quit skating. She's so beautiful when she skates and I'm thrilled she has an activity she enjoys. She's been working at the snack bar at the pool and loves having a paycheck. She hates her bank because they are never open when I can get her there to cash the check. Should I let her get an ATM card?

I tried three times to get the new iPhone software to download before it was successful. The download took over 75 minutes each time and process would die with 5 minutes to go. I don't have the new iPhone 4 but I got many of the new features on my 3Gs with this download. Some of the new features are quirky and I'm still trying to figure them out. Oh well. I'd love to be a product test for Apple.

My brother and Roseanne finally opened their yarn shop in Culpeper, VA. I guess I need to visit sometime, huh?


Oh, that's enough rambling for now.

The Weekend and More

Wow, it's Wednesday already and I haven't posted anything of substance in a while.

Hold that thought, the fire alarm is going off, need to evacuate the building.

That was fun.

Anyway, we have a new vehicle, a silver Kia Sorento. Bought it last Thursday, got it home, and not thirty minutes later Dan was on the way to Chicago for the weekend for his mother's interment. He got home at 03:00 on Sunday morning with 1500 miles on it. I guess I need to post a picture of it, huh?

Friday, Kevin went to swim team practice and I headed off to Costco with a pocket full of camera memory cards. It only took an hour to load 1900 pictures into their system and pick almost 300 to have printed on real photo paper. And then it only took an hour to actually have them printed. I was impressed with that part. I also had a DVD made of all the pictures so now I have digital copies available at work since my work computer won't read the memory cards. When was the last time you had real photo-paper prints made? Been a while, huh?

Saturday was pretty much a blur, I cleaned the kitchen and baked a rhubarb pie, but that's all I remember I got done. I hadn't baked a pie in a long time and forgot to set the timer to remind me to turn down the oven after 10 minutes. Yup, the crust was a little dark, but not too bad. Oh well.

Blogging friend Lorraine is in town this week for a conference and had time in her schedule to hang out with me on Sunday. She got to experience the new vehicle. I gave her nearly burnt pie, took her to church, then took her to Baltimore's Fell's Point. We had tapas for lunch and swapped stories of our teenage daughters who don't turn in homework. I got her back to her hotel in time for her event. Our time was much too short.

I had Kevin and Fern and her boyfriend with me to Baltimore so after we dropped Lorraine off, I took the kids to the Mall. There were lots of events going on so parking was at a premium. I found a place a couple blocks away from the National Gallery of Art, so that's were we went. Kevin had been there before and made a bee-line for the basement. We spent most of our time riding the moving walkway connecting the East Wing with the West. The other two kids were on their own to explore for a while.

I haven't been quilting in a while, and I've missed it. After I got my quilt done for the show, I've focused on getting my badge sewing done. I've had several vests to work on since before spring break and now am almost finished with my backlog. When this last vest is done, I get to go back to quilting. I still have three baby quilts to finish for the aforementioned fertile office mates.

And now, here's a picture from our spring break cruise. Now that I've got these on DVD I can post more pictures.




 

In the long run, folks are gonna suffer

I am sad for my daughter and her friends.
I'm sad for all the kids going to schools in districts where they've eliminated Home Economics because of budget constraints.

Getting back to natural is a big new craze in the food industry. A lot of people have books out now about how bad things are, how the hormones injected into cattle are making kids hit puberty at younger ages, how folks are consuming 300 to 500 more calories per day than they were in the 1950's because of the way foods are processed, how convenience foods are the death of us all.

I'm not disputing any of these things. I haven't read the books, I don't have the facts. I just hear things.

What troubles me is there seems to be no education for today's youth in the home sciences. I've complained before that at my daughter's school, she got one quarter, every-other day of health education. She received no real substantial nutritional information, nothing that'll stick with her. The nutrition lesson may have been: here's a food pyramid. I am constantly reminding her she needs protein and vegetables to go with those [fill in a starchy food/snacks here].

I don't know how long it's been since they've quit teaching home-ec in school, but I suspect those girls are now raising kids of their own. Or trying to. Do they know how to cook? Did their moms teach them? Are their kids overweight because they eat a lot of fast food? Would the obesity rates in kids coincide with the removal of home-ec in our schools? I'm sure there is going to be a long-term connection.

What's going to happen when there are several generations of people who grow up without a home-ec education? Will they even put kitchens in houses in the future? OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the point. I'm giving the school systems some of the blame for not providing the basic knowledge of good nutrition, cooking and self-sufficient survival to our youth.

Even if the food industry is revitalized, I still fear for the future, fresh, hormone-free food will be abundant, but no one will be able to prepare it.

 

The incident that spurred this rant was an attempted pineapple upside-down cake. Fern and her friend wanted to make a cake over the weekend. They found a recipe in one of those church collection cookbooks, recipes from little old church ladies who assume you know what they mean so the directions are a bit abbreviated.

They went something like this:
Melt the butter and the brown sugar in the skillet. Arrange the pineapple rings in the skillet. Sift the flour and baking powder together. Separate the eggs and beat the yolks and slowly add the sugar, then the pineapple juice. Add the flour mixture. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold into the batter. Pour batter over pineapple slices and bake.... It made sense to me. However,

I got called into the kitchen when the girls were complaining the batter was too runny and they didn't know what to do. They also thought they had to transfer it all to a cake pan. It was a mess.

I got the sugar/butter stuff back in the skillet and remelted it and added the pineapple slices back in. I remade the batter from scratch since I couldn't use what the girls had done. I called them back when I got to the part about folding the beaten whites into the batter. Fern's friend was amazed at the sight, she'd never seen, or heard of beaten egg whites. How long did that take? Only about a minute. Wow

I demonstrated the art of "folding" and had her try too. I reviewed the recipe and explained the steps. The cake turned out well despite its shaky start. I think the girls just read the ingredient list and dumped them in a bowl. I learned to cook basic family meals from my mother, but I learned skills at school. Does anyone else notice this gaping whole? I'll teach what I can to my own children, if they are willing to learn. (Learning from one's parent versus an outside teacher is a whole other blog topic...)



Here is a similar recipe I found on the web with better instructions.

• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 3/4 cup chopped pecans
• 20-ounce can of pineapple slices, drained, reserving 5 tablespoons juice
• 3 eggs, separated
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• maraschino cherries

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Melt the butter in a 9-inch cast iron skillet. Add the brown sugar and pecans; stir well to thoroughly combine, then turn off the heat -- don't cook it. Arrange 8 pineapple slices in a single layer over the brown sugar mixture (your 9-inch skillet should accommodate 8 slices without overlapping). Set the skillet aside.

Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl; set aside.

Beat the egg yolks at medium speed until they are thick and lemon colored. Gradually add the sugar, continuing to beat. Add the flour mixture to the yolk mixture, and stir in the reserved pineapple juice.

Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold the whites into the cake batter. Pour or spoon the batter evenly over the pineapple slices.

Bake at 350°F for 40 to 45 minutes. Cool the cake in the skillet for 30 minutes; then invert it onto a serving plate. Place a maraschino cherry in the center of each pineapple ring.


Enjoy!

What I did

I told you about my dilemma with the make-up I bought. I'm pretty sure it was an honest mistake, leaving the price of one thing off the ticket so the totals were different. And the person who put the prices on the tickets was not the person who totaled them up. They worked for different companies.

I took back two of the items on Saturday, the other four things I felt good about and kept. I'll be getting back a bit into my account. One of the things I kept was an indigo mascara which looked very good on me. I wore it yesterday and by the end of the day my eyes were stinging. So, that's going back, too. Oh well.

Other weekend activities included cleaning the kitchen, and not just a cursory wipe-down of the counters. I promised Fern money if she washed the cabinet fronts for me. I still owe her for that. Bought a book of Japanese quilt block patterns at Borders along with Jennifer Chiaverini's new book The Lost Quilter and went to Ikea again to get the last set of castors I need for the new shelf in the sewing room. They are still out, but I managed to still spend money on other things.

Sunday Fern and I drove up to Newark Delaware for Fern's District ice skating championship competition at the U. of Delaware, and had lunch with my college roommate and her husband, too. I hadn't seen them in several years, we had a lot of catching up to do but not enough time. We ate at a place called Matilda's and Fern had the Roo Burger. Tasted like very lean beef. I didn't like it much. maybe it was too cold by the time I got a taste, or maybe it was too lean, but 'roo is not for me. Fat tastes good.

Here's my college roommate, looking puzzled because she didn't know I was taking her picture (sneaky iPhone camera):

My Contribution

I made this for our office potluck. The pan was empty by the end of the day. Which was good because I hate that anxiety, the one when you wonder if the others will like your dish.

I hate lunch. I mean I like to eat it, but I'd rather just have someone give it to me than to have to think about it and plan it and prepare it and remember to take it to work with me and then remember to eat it.

I tend to not think about food until I'm hungry. (I think this is one of my major faults as a wife and mom—meal planning. I said one of my faults)

I went grocery shopping last night for the family, we were out of a lot of things since we were away for the weekend. I even put on my list "lunch stuff for mom" and aisle after aisle, nothing interested me. I forced myself to purchase single serving microwave soups and salami, but if I don't plan, I'm scratching my head at 1:45 every day wondering why I'm hungry.

---

We went to Birmingham for Dan's friends' wedding over the weekend. We stayed over an extra day and went to the DeSoto Caverns. The cave was the main attraction, but they built other things to do. Dan said it was kinda like what he imagined Grubby Gulch to be, if you remember your Lizzy McGuire days. I had more fun than I expected in the squirt-gun maze and ran out of water too quickly. I need to do that again.

The mini-golf was brutal. There was a creek that ran under the course and every hole gave you the opportunity to lose your ball in the drink. I did pretty well until the 8th hole when I lost my ball and didn't recover it until I ran back down to the 3rd hole. I wondered if I was supposed to play back up the hill again, or just walk. It was a good day even though it was HOT!

Teenage Attitude

Bride and Groom

hand-held shot of the light show in the cave

Kevin and Fern enjoy the pedal go-carts

Let's Eat

I was lying in bed last night thinking of different things so I wouldn't think about the fact I was not yet asleep, and one of the things I tripped over was vegetables.

My son now likes broccoli. This is fabulous. This is fabulous because it's not a "white" food. For so many years he just ate pale food: french fries, grits, french fries, hot dogs, chicken nuggets with ranch dressing, french fries with ranch dressing, spaghetti-n-sauce. Not red sauce.

Early on in my marriage I found a recipe on the back of a box of tortellini for cream sauce. It's been a family staple ever since. The boy loved it then. And still does.

Nowadays, he "helps" me cook the sauce, he has to stir the sauce and control its destination, meaning it had to all go on his plate. Which meant I'd have to make another pot for the rest of us. In recent weeks he's understanding the concept of sharing the sauce and will pour some on each person's plate when it's time to serve.

The other night Dan and The Girl went to see the Wizards beat the Celtics (Yay!) and The boy and I had a dinner of spaghetti-n-sauce and broccoli. He at the broccoli first. I couldn't believe my eyes. This is like the day when your kid ate the chicken nuggets first before the french fries, except better.

Spaghetti-n-Sauce

• Fix your favorite pasta according to the directions


• in a small sauce pan, i prefer a heavy non-stick pan, over med-low heat, melt a couple tablespoons of butter. (probably 1 per person, I never really measured and the original recipe is long gone.)


• stir in a couple ounces of parmesan cheese. I usually use shredded, but grated (yes, the stuff in the green can) melts faster.


• don't get the butter too hot or you'll fry the cheese instead of melt it. (which, is itself a yummy treat, but not our goal here)


• when it's all melty, like a big mess and you wonder if you're doing it right, add a couple ounces of cream. stir until smooth. I use a wooden spoon. I sometimes have to raise the heat to get the cheese to melt smoothly. If it's too thin, add more cheese and keep stirring. It should be thick like a good hollandaise, but not able to sit upright on its own plate.


• pour over your pasta or put the pasta in the sauce to mix, then serve

It's not bad over broccoli, either.

Winter Solstice

I'm feeling kinda depressed today.

I hate the new shower head a lot. It takes me so long to take a shower now, so long to get the soap off, so long to get the shampoo out, and even longer to rinse out the conditioner. Kinda defeats the purpose of a water saver shower head, doncha think? My back and scalp feel like they are starting to break out as if I'm not getting them clean enough. I feel like I'm at summer camp, all that's missing is the sulfur smell, too. Sheesh.

---

My husband pointed out a recipe on the label of the can of condensed milk: Magic cookie bars. The Girl and her friend, Hermione, helped me make them. Here's the recipe:

1.5 cups graham cracker crumbs
.5 cups butter melted
1 can sweetened condensed milk
2 cups chocolate chips (12 oz)
1.3 cups flaked coconut
1 cup chopped nuts

Preheat oven to 350°F (325°F for glass dish).
In a small bowl, combine graham cracker crumbs and butter, mix well. Press mixture into a 13x9-inch baking pan.
Pour condensed milk evenly over crumbs.
layer evenly with remaining ingredients; press down firmly with a fork.
Bake 25 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool. Chill if desired. cut into bars. Store covered at room temperature.

Sounded easy enough. Hard to mess up. Right? They look pretty good coming out of the oven. But they are not "bars," they are crumbles. Taste OK, but don't hold together. They turned out like a chocolate chip cobbler.

Can any of you cooking types figure out what is wrong with this? Can you help me out and make my day?

Down Hill Slide

I hate this time of year. I'm not talking about the visual delight everywhere you look, the sharp blue sky contrasts wonderfully with the crisp yellows and reds of the maples and oaks. Today I'm talking about the number on the scale.

Kevin's birthday (carrot cake and cheese fries) is followed by Halloween (almond joys and butterfingers), which is followed by my birthday (more carrot cake unless the girl picks it out, then it's cheese cake), which is followed by Thanksgiving (lobster bisque, cherry pie and stuffing) and Christmas (more cherry pie and more stuffing). Food and candy everywhere (not counting the box of full-sized snickers dark bars in my desk). And on top of all that, it's so dark and cold in the mornings now making it so hard to get up to walk by myself.

Next weekend daylight saving time ends so it'll be light in the morning again, AM gets her cast off today, and L is recovering well from her mastectomy of last Monday.

Things are looking up.

Compilation of Failures

Yesterday is over. Thank goodness.

I volunteered to coordinate my office picnic, sorry, summer off-site staff development meeting. Two years ago I planned it, it went well, but decided to hand over the reins to someone else. It never got off the ground.

My boss asked me to coordinate the outing again this year and I agreed. One reason for me to do it is because I am a member of a pool club which has a nice place for a group gathering.

In the beginning I polled office mates as to whether they'd like a planned menu or potluck. The results were split. I took the diplomatic approach, those who wanted to bring potluck could and the rest could just give me $5 each and I'd purchase extra food for the group. Good plan, yes?

The pool club opens at 11:00 am in the summer and noon when school is in session, so the plan was to have everyone start arriving around noon and we'll start the grills at 12:30. Instead of going into the office, I stayed home bought and prepared the food from the monetary contributions. I bought brownie mix, chicken to grill, chicken to make my curried chicken salad, cucumbers, and a gallon of milk to make another batch of mozzarella to go with the tomatoes someone else was bringing.

The batch of cheese completely failed, didn't come together at all, the curds never formed solidly enough to create the cheese. I think it was too hot when I put the rennet in.

I ran out of my favorite curry powder for the chicken salad. My neighbor was visiting and ran to the store to get some for me, thank you.

Do you need anything else while I'm there? "No, thanks, I think I have everything." Out the door and down the driveway and I remember I need tablecloths for the picnic tables. Darn, now I have to make another stop on the way to the pool.

I arrive at the pool at 5 till 12:00 and the gates are still closed so I run over to the grocery first. I'm back at 10 after 12:00 and the parking lot is still empty, whew, nobody is there yet. and the gates are still locked. Uh oh. The club opens at 1:00 pm when school is in session, not noon. D'oh!

On the bright side, no one showed up until about 25 minutes till 1 and I remembered the printout of the guest list to give the gate guard and remembered to bring the grill tools.

Forgot to have someone bring napkins with other paper goods, and forgot to write down the person bringing hamburgers so I forgot burgers would be on the menu.

Then there's the whole part when I left the picnic —and Kevin—to pick up Daughter so she can attend, but her bus was late, thus I abandoned my guests for much longer than intended. And most were gone when I got back. Argh.

I hope everyone had a good time despite my oversights and failures.

Can't wait till next year!

Curried Chicken Salad

This is what I took to AM's pool party last week, I got a request for the recipe, so here goes.

I'm not into measuring, I just eyeball it.

• drain two 12 oz. cans of cooked chicken, (mine came from Costco) reserving some liquid (of course you can cook your own chicken, but I didn't for this party)


• Put the chicken in a mixing bowl and use your fingers to mush the chicken hunks into smaller pieces, you can chop it up with a knife if you really want to, but it takes longer.


• add
  
  
  • a large handful or two of golden raisins and/or grapes cut in half, champagne grapes are good, too, for this if they are in season
  
  
  • a very large handful coarsely chopped pecans
  
  
  • a chopped crunchy apple or two
  
  (other fruit could include chopped dates and pineapple, add to your taste, I think I used dried cranberries last week, too)
  


• put about 1/4 cup of the reserved chicken stock in a pan and stir in 2 or 3 teaspoons curry powder, I used sweet curry.


• bring to a boil and simmer, stirring, until you have a thick paste remove from the heat and let it cool for a bit.


• when you can stick your finger in there without burning yourself, add about a cup of mayo and stir until smooth


• add the mayo to the chicken & fruit mix and stir thoroughly


• refrigerate for about an hour to let the flavor intensify before serving

let me know how it turns out!