Last Night's Fireworks Show

Yeppers Peppers

 

I am growing a small garden this year in the raised beds beside my house. This is the first real garden I have put in since moving to the area over ten years ago. It is mostly herbs, with several varieties of tomato, eggplant, squash and strawberries.

I bought a few tiny pepper starts a couple weeks ago. They came from a vendor at the farmers market who sells over ninety varieties. I never knew there were so many! It was a tough decision, but I brought home three Anchos (for making chile rellenos), one decorative Bolivian Rainbow and one Black Hungarian (just to see what it tastes like).

The pepper plants have been nurtured ever so carefully indoors, according to the instructions that came with them. Now that it is in the 60's at night, it is finally time to bring the peppers outside. The weather just hasn't been cooperating this year. It has been rainy, cloudy and unseasonably cool all spring. These peppers need some warm soil and hot weather so they will produce fruit that will ripen by the end of the growing season. Now that summer is here and it is getting a bit warmer, I am hopeful for a bountiful harvest.

Connected by MOTOBLUR™ on T-Mobile

Back At It

It is sometimes difficult to come up with the self-discipline it takes to do things on a regular basis. Here is another try at putting it in writing.

Cookies For Roxana

Here is the recipe for Oatcakes, from the Home Baking cookbook by Alford and Duguid.

2 cups rolled oats
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
2 sticks butter (cold, cut into medium-sized pieces)
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup hot water

Mix this up in a food processor in this order:
Put oats in processor and chop about 30 sec for regular rolled oats, 20 sec for instant. Add flours, sugar and salt and pulse a couple times to mix. Add butter and run processor until mixture has the consistency of fine meal. Stir baking soda into hot water. Add water to flour mixture, processing as you pour. Stop processing when dough comes together.

Put dough into a bowl, cover and refrigerate for at least an hour. It can be refrigerated up to 4 hours.

Preheat oven to 325 deg. Divide dough in 4 pieces. Roll each on a lightly floured surface to a thickness of 1/8 inch. Flip and dust with flour as needed to keep it from sticking.

Cut with a cookie cutter or a glass to make rounds or cut with a knife to make squares or triangles. Bake for 10-15 minutes on buttered baking sheets. You can put these on two racks positioned both above and below the center of the oven.

Leave cookies out overnight to crisp before storing in airtight container or cookie jar.

Help Yourself to Some Cookies Too, Dear

I broke down and made hot dogs for lunch yesterday. As you may already know, this is pretty unusual for me since I don't believe that hot dogs are actually food.

The kids thought it was cool.

They come in a package of eight. Ravenous Boy had two, Microtween had one, the big Little had two, the little Little had one, and I had one (but don't tell anyone or I'll blame it on the cats). That's seven, so there was one left over.

I told the little Little he could have it if he was still hungry after he ate his first one.

After we finished I forgot what I'd already said and asked if anyone wanted the leftover dog. Three voices answered at the same time -- Ravenous Boy and both of The Littles.

Here's how it went down:

"Never mind. They can have it," said Ravenous Boy.

"I want it!" cried the little Little.

"But I told you your hair looks beautiful," asserted the big Little, referring to a compliment he had given me as I was drying my hair earlier in the morning.

I made The Littles split the last hot dog.

Snow Daze

So the powers that be have canceled school now for three days in a row. Just before winter break, too. And with the new snow expected today that means the kids will be home for THREE WEEKS STRAIGHT. Oh, what to do...

A Perfect Loaf of Banana Bread

It was too cold to go out yesterday and I had a couple ugly bananas in the fruit bowl so I got out my favorite banana bread recipe -- the special one with nutmeg and rum. It has a wonderful sparkling sugar crust on top that makes it the best banana bread ever.

The recipe calls for a little dried coconut instead of nuts, but I forgot. However, the bread is still good without it and the kids will eat more of it without either of those things in it. My neighbor puts chocolate chips in hers and it's wonderful that way, too.

I always burn the banana bread. I even tried baking with the oven turned down 25 degrees, but it still got a bit dark on top and around the edges. If it was done on the inside, it was black somewhere on the outside. But, wow! Take a look at this beautiful loaf!

Thanks to Dad's instructions and the oven thermometer he bought me, I set the thermostat on the oven and baked (for the first time) a perfect loaf of banana bread. It turns out that the oven was more than 50 degrees hotter than it was supposed to be.

Now that it is fixed, I can't wait to see how cookies turn out! I'm ready to go on a holiday baking binge and this is just the start. I have in mind to make some Rolo Cookies, Snickerdoodles and Pfefferneusse. And definitely more banana bread!

Snow Day

The Littles woke up this morning with snow on their minds. They have been wishing for snow for the past three days, so were very excited that it finally happened. The other two are still sleeping, and probably will be for a few more hours.

Our house is only about 200 feet above sea level and we rarely have snow. From the weather reports, it sounds like we are due for some sub-freezing temperatures for the next week and the snow will be sticking around for a while.

Happy Monday!

Breakfast spontaneity from the littlest of The Littles.

A Novel Idea

So I got bored with my ordinary life the other day and decided to write a book.

As I told you in my previous blog, our computer was down and I had a small chunk of free time to waste. I thought I'd check out Stephenie Meyer's "Breaking Dawn", but I realized it is the last book of a series of four and decided I had best start at the beginning.

So I read "Twilight".

I devoured it.

All five-hundred-and-some-odd pages.

In one sitting.

And the next evening I bought the second book.

And stayed up all night to read it.

And then I had to get up and go back to my ordinary boring life. I had to get the kids up, make lunches and fix breakfast, drive to school, shop, cook, remind everyone of their after school schedules, and so on. But my ordinary life wasn't working for me so well anymore. I had this insatiable desire to keep reading.

The next book wasn't in my meager budget until the next payday, a week and a day away. So after a few days I started asking coworkers if any of them had read the series and would anyone please, please, please loan me the book. One had a daughter who had read the books and she would see if the daughter would let me borrow them. Hooray!!

But it never happened. The books were on their way around Oregon. The daughter loaned them to a friend who read them and loaned them to a friend who did the same. their last known whereabouts were somewhere in Eugene. I was not likely to get them anytime soon.

So I broke my budget. Oh, the guilt. But oh, the ecstacy! I had the book in my hot little hands and....

Oh, yeah...I'm going to write a book. (And take my kids to see the Twilight movie!)

I finished reading all four books in the "Twilight" series, then started on "The Hunger Games". All this reading got me to thinking that it might be fun to try writing my own book.

I would have to come up with a plot (certainly not vampires - that's already been done) and a setting (I thought of a few places in Oregon that would make good backdrops) and maybe I could just fill in the rest.

I've been playing with ideas all week and running them past my husband and kids to see if they would read a book like mine. I don't know if they are just saying yes because they like me, but I'll take it as an encouraging sign and keep developing the story. I am quite surprised by how all the pieces are starting to fit together.

Maybe someday I will finish it and someone will read it. I would be happy even if it was just my family.

Computer Glitch

Here I am again, dealing with my recurring nightmare: hard drive failure. No email. No internet. No games. The kids have had to stay late do their homework on the computers in the school library. No calendar. Oops, missed an important appointment this morning. No contact list. I have to reenter my contact list because I couldn't get it to back up the other day?!! Aaaaaaaagh! No fun.

So, what's the problem? We have a non-descript disk read error that balks at our efforts at rehabilitation. We tried everything we know and a few things we didn't (thanks to a few kind and merciful computer geniuses we know) to make it work, but nothing helped. I have had four days of moody pre-teens and teenagers mucking about the house with complaints of boredom and endless misery. I've been without email and internet for four days and I've read two 500 page novels just to keep busy.

My husband and I have installed two hard drives in the past six months. Last night, he installed a third. We are officially back up today thanks to that wonderful man! So today I am setting up accounts, upgrading the browser, installing and configuring programs and trying to salvage anything I can get off of the old hard drive. I am hurriedly trying to catch back up with my email and am oh so happy to be in touch with the world again.

In Response to a News Article About Telemarketers

I work as a telemarketer and fundraiser for a local non-profit organization. I love my job because I can go to work part time, spend time with my kids, pick my own schedule, and still make good money. I talk to the nicest people every day. Some of them even buy what I am offering. Most of them are polite when they answer the phone and assertive enough to say what they want or don't want. For the rest of you, here are a few tips:

1. Say no if you mean no.
No, thank you. No, I'm not interested. No, I don't like your product. No way, no how. If you say maybe or if you say yes, I'm calling you back. Soon. Until you finally pick up the phone and say "no."

2. Get on the National and State Do Not Call lists.
It doesn't help right away, but after a month or so, most the people you don't want to hear from stop calling. Don't forget that there are some exemptions. You can still get calls from companies with which you have done business, non-profit organizations and a few others. If you don't want these calls, ask to be put on the company's own Do Not Call List.

3. All you have to do is ask.
If you do not ask me to put you on our Do Not Call List, I won't. If you hang up on me, your name will go back into our rotation and I will be calling you again for our next campaign. Neither one of us is looking forward to that.

4. Choose when you are available or unavailable.
If you answer your phone in the middle of a meeting, dinner or an important project, I am not the one who is responsible for interrupting you. Really, I couldn't tell as I was dialing that this was a "bad time to call." Don't answer the phone if you don't want to be interrupted.

I hope some of these tips work for you. You can practice them on me next time I call you. I promise I won't yell.

A link to the article: http://www.katu.com/news/28588599.html