Food Stuff

Have you missed me? I've been taking a small blogging break. Something had to take up all the time I usually spend here. So, we've been eating! Since Friday's Feast is on vacation this week, I thought I'd share a feast of my own making, the yummy kind. To say "we like food" at our house is understatement extraordinaire. We cook. We eat. Therefore we are.

Breaking in the new wok from Taiwan with a batch of fajitas. I know, wrong culture. It worked great though! Our stove even has a wok ring that you place on a burner to hold the wok in place. It is so cool!

Can I tell you how much I adore pumpkin? I can eat it any time of year. This particular Pumpkin Cheesecake in a Gingersnap Crust was particularly yummy last week, especially with pecans substituted for the hazelnuts in the crust.

This is truly a sad sight. I only made this batch of brownies last night and Shawn and I are the only ones home! These are the best chocolate brownies ever, ever, ever, ever.........ever.

Brownies

1/2 cup butter, melted

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup flour

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8" square pan. (I used Corelle greased with butter). In a medium bowl (I used my KichenAid mixer for this recipe) combine melted butter and cocoa, stirring until dissolved. Add sugar and mix well. Add eggs one at a time and mix until well combined. Stir in vanilla, flour, and salt until combined. Do not over mix. Fold in chocolate chips. Spread in pan and bake for about 25 minutes. Do not over bake. There's nothing worse than dried up brownies! Test with a toothpick for doneness. Toothpick should come out of center with moist crumbs, not clean. Cool, cut, eat. Yum.

You can thank me later. Just don't send me the bill for your new pants, one size bigger.

Happy Friday everyone!

Wordless Wednesday

Busy Days

The Phi Theta Kappa induction ceremony. Apparently, Julia was in motion, and is therefore out of focus as she received her flowers!

I am always amazed at how busy this time of the year can be. Earle is only home for one more day before his next trip and we've been working feverishly to get all those springtime chores done before he is whisked off to Germany again. We've planted the rest of the garden except the tomatoes and peppers which will go in shortly. We fenced it in too, after our local rabbits had feasted on our spinach. Little buggers. It's a good thing they're cute! We even planted our deck pots with annuals, but we had to bring them inside last night because of danger of frost up here on the hill. It is a little early still for annuals, but with Earle going away again we wanted to get them underway.

This trip he will be taking Julia along for the ride. Twelve days in Germany, she is thrilled! She has waited for this for two years now. Whenever Earle had to go she was unavailable to accompany him. School. Work. More school. Finals are over, summer employment hasn't begun yet, she is off! It will be a nice reward for a job well done at school. Last week she participated in the induction ceremony for the Honor Society of Two Year Schools. We're not sure which professor nominated her, but it is a nice honor and will translate to scholarship dollars at a transfer school. All A's and one A- to round out the year. Way to go Julia! Next year will be tough, but she is very capable. She has signed up for: Organic Chemistry, Abnormal Psychology, Genetics, and I don't remember what else off the top of my head. Anyway, they are all upper level courses and all four or five credits I think. (ETA: The other course is Creative Writing) This summer she can give her brain a rest. She goes back to Kohl's for a summer job. They welcomed her back gladly. She has already started to unwind a bit with a trip down childhood lane as she rereads an old favorite, The Wind in the Willows.

We've been busy with Shawn's educational plans too. He will be taking British Lit with me over the summer and will be studying Medieval History next year using the Teaching Company lecture series as a spine: The Early Middle Ages, The High Middle Ages, and The Late Middle Ages. He also took the placement test at the community college and will be signing up for classes with an advisor of Friday. He will be taking College Composition I and Statistics. This year is not yet complete. I suspect we will need until close to the end of June to finish up. It seems as though the junior year of high school ends up being the most taxing year with the most work. After all, when you are preparing to launch into college classes the next year you can't slack off.

Speaking of slacking off, I'd better go watch Shawn's Art History lecture with him. Back to work, Mom! Tomorrow will be a busy day. Earle and Julia leave for Europe at about dinner time and I will be spending the day at the school with the present art teacher, learning about the make-up of the different classes, the schedule, the supplies, etc. It will be a busy day all around.

I will try to get my Wordless Wednesday up tomorrow before I go. We'll see. I Already have an idea for a picture. Hopefully I'll have time in the morning to post it before I head out. Also, what do you think of the new template? I needed a break from the black. I liked how it made all the colors pop, but it was looking a bit too wintry for me. I thought about installing a custom template, but Julia, my html guru won't be here to help me, so I went with one of the presets that Blogger gives you. It's a nice change though.

Lastly, did you catch the season finale of House last night? It was awesome! Now I can't wait until next year. Is the door open, perhaps, for a personality change for House? Will there be regret? An irrevocably broken relationship with his only friend? Poor 13 though, I felt so sad for her.

Wordless Wednesday

Sibling Ticklefest 2008

Mother's Day

Mother's Day was one of those relaxing, do nothing, sit around the house like a blob kind of days. It was wonderful. We attended church and came out all weepy after a very touching sermon. Then we packed ourselves full of calorie laden food at Bob Evans before heading home to slouch on the sofa reading the paper and other general "vegging".

Shawn worked eight and a half hours the day before and was tired, but he managed to give his favorite mom a very wonderful head massage which just about knocked her out for the rest of the day. He also came out of work on Saturday night with a wonderful card and luscious package of chocolates for his favorite mom for Mother's Day. What a sweetie.

Julia was tired too and glad to veg and be bloblike. She had to put in some time studying for one of her finals the next day. Today she found out she was the only one in the class to get an A on that final. Yippee! The class is Evolution and is the uppermost level biology class offered at the community college. Great job Julia! She has two more to go on Friday and then it is officially summer vacation.

Poor jet-lagged Earle was awfully tired from his two week trip that he arrived home from Saturday night. Planning ahead and knowing he would be tired, he had flowers delivered to me on Saturday. They were, and still are, beautiful and thoughtful. He also brought us home a humongous steel wok that he bought in Taiwan at, are you ready for this, Costco. He had to join Costco to buy it. We don't even have one around here. How funny is that?!

So, after we'd done our share of nothing, we decided nobody really wanted to cook. We ordered delivery. Pizza and Stromboli. Yum. Of course, the next day, and today still, I'm "bloated up like road kill" from all the salt! Earle and I washed it down with ice cold Bacardi Mojitos. I may indeed be bloated the rest of the week...

I hope your Mother's Day was also lovely and that you ate and drank well and had just the right mix of fun and comfort. Best of all, I hope you enjoyed your family as much as I enjoyed mine. Cheers!

Good News

Some of you may remember that I applied for a teaching position back in January. Well, one refreshed resume, several application essays, two interviews, and a lot of waiting later and I was offered the job today! I accepted over the phone, but the paperwork will need to be done to make it official. I will be the new art teacher at a local Christian school beginning this September. It is a full time position for art, grades K-12. I can hardly believe it has actually happened. I am about to burst. When Earle comes home tomorrow we'll have some serious celebrating to do!

When we ask Him for something that is so big we are sure we could never attain it on our own and then it happens, we know it is Him and not us who deserves the credit. I really never thought I would have the opportunity to teach full time again. I have been out of the classroom a very long time and have homeschooled, the kiss of death for a public school teacher! I wasn't sure I would even want to go back to the public school system. Then this position fell right into my lap, right at the best time. I feel so incredibly small in the hand of He who with those same hands sets into motion the whole workings of the universe. And yet, He knows every hair on my head and every need within my heart.

Friday's Feast

Here's The Feast for you! Happy Friday everyone. See you in the comments as usual. I can't wait to see what you all have to say. It's been quite a week for us here between the SAT exam, the college placment exam, the fencing class tournament, and the dog incident. I'm sure glad it's Friday!




Appetizer
When someone smiles at you, do you smile back?


Soup
Describe the flooring in your home. Do you have carpet, hardwood, vinyl, a mix?


Salad
Write a sentence with only 5 words, but all of the words have to start with the first letter of your first name.


Main Course
Do you know anyone whose life has been touched by adoption?


Dessert
Name 2 blue things.

Photoshop Phun

Peaceful Cape Breton, Canada

Portland Head Light, Maine

The Tide is out

Cape Breton's rocky coast

I think I am becoming addicted to Photoshop. Does anyone know the symptoms? I think I might need intervention... After the week I've had and the amount of pain meds I've consumed from a solid week of migraines, Photoshop is about all the creativity I can handle right now. Photoshop and Vicodin. Hook me up. Painting, it's overrated ;-)



Is it summer vacation yet?

The original pics were all taken by my resident photo-crazed husband with his now retired Sony digital camera. If you want to see some of Earle's recent, un-photomanipulated photographs, there are some lovely pics on his blog that he took the other day in Germany. Enjoy!

Wordless Wednesday

Feathered Friends

This place has been overrun with birds lately! Remember our new neighbor last year, the Oriole? He is back and singing up a storm in the trees and in the bush. He loves to dip his beak into the blossoms of the flowering quince, extracting the nectar like a perched hummingbird. I bought him some orange speckled suet. It's been fun watching his orange bottom half flip skyward as he hangs from the suet cage to feed! I hope he decides to build a nest here again this year.

We've seen other new faces around here lately. Last week I spotted a towhee for the first time. He seems to have become a regular in the yard now. I often see him perched on the bush waiting for a turn at the ground seed under the feeder. He seems to show up when there isn't a lot of action around the feeder. He must be a solitary bird.

I had a very exciting few minutes last Friday as my art student was leaving. We had just opened the studio door when we saw a flurry of bright blue feathers in the bush ahead. We just had time to realise what it was when it took off up the path and then skyward toward the neighbor's yard. I ran for the bird books. Since he was a smallish bird and did not appear to have a rust colored belly, we concluded he must have been an indigo bunting. Boy, was he beautiful! I had seen a bluebird in the early spring last year, during an unexpected snow storm, so I knew this bird was not the same shape, size, or shade of blue.

We have had an abundance of gold finches this year as well. We have seen them other years, but this year they seem to have multiplied. I can't keep the thistle feeder full! They drain it in about a day and a half.

The cats are loving our bird population too. Daisy Mae likes to sit outside on Shawn's lap and make little kitty noises at the birds. Her little 'indoor kitty" paws have never touched the ground. Shawn can lay on the lounge chair on the deck and fall asleep with her on his chest and she won't even move. She makes no attempt to leave the security of her Shawn while she is in "the big room." Truffle spends a good deal of his outdoor time across the street in the field of long grass, prowling like a lion on the savanna, but when he stays closer to home he is laying in wait under the feeders. So far he is too old and slow. I hope it stays that way! The birds don't see Percy as a threat, and well they shouldn't. He couldn't find his way out of a paper bag. Bless his heart!

I just love this time of year. The birds are so active, building nests and courting. The mourning doves chase their mates around the yard, more interested in frolicking than foraging. The windows and doors are flung open and the birdsong surrounds us and warms our hearts. New life. The eternal renewal of spring wings its song across the valley, echoing from tree to tree. In the glorious sunshine the harshness of winter is forgotten, like the labor pains of a new mom as she gazes into the eyes of her precious miracle. The earth has given birth to newness of life, to spring.

Friday's Feast

A little Photoshop dining ambiance to accompany the feast

Appetizer
What was your favorite cartoon when you were a child?

Soup
Pretend you are about to get a new pet. Which animal would you pick, and what would you name it?

Salad
On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being highest, how much do you enjoy getting all dressed up for a special occasion?


Main Course
What kind of music do you listen to while you drive?


Dessert
When was the last time you bought a clock? And in which room did you put it?


Check the comments for my responses. what say you?