Monday, June 22, 2009

the taste of summer

Lemon is a perfect summer flavor. It's light and refreshing, whether in a savory dish or included in a dessert. I made this Lemon Pudding Cake last night. It's great except for the hot oven, so I like to bake things at night during the summer, when possible. Delish!

It's from Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book (1996). I really like Better Homes and Gardens cookbooks. They are basic yet have a wide variety of recipes, which is useful as I pare down my cookbook collection. I searched on the B.H.&G. website for this recipe, to no avail, so here it is:

Lemon Pudding Cake

1/2 cup sugar
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon finely shredded lemon peel (I used all the lemon peel)
3 tablespoons lemon juice (used all the lemon juice)
2 tablespoons butter or margarine, melted (used butter)
2 slightly beaten egg yolks
1 cup milk
2 egg whites

Combine sugar & flour. Stir in lemon peel, lemon juice & melted butter. Combine egg yolks & milk. Add to flour mixture; stir just till combined. Beat egg whites till stiff peaks form. Gently fold egg whites into lemon batter. Transfer batter to a 1-quart casserole. Place the casserole in a large pan on an oven rack. Pour hot water into the large pan surrounding the casserole to a depth of 1 inch.
Bake in a preheated 350 degree (Farenheit) oven about 40 minutes or till golden & top springs back when lightly touched near the center. Remove casserole dish from the water bath & cool just until warm. Best served when warm.
Makes 4 servings.


Just look at that delectable pudding juxtaposed against soft crumbly cake. It's such a pretty pastel yellow.
My Darling Husband taste tested it last night.
This evening he was out, and I was left alone with the pudding cake.
I tried to save some for you, Darling Husband.
Really I did.
But my sweet tooth got the better of me.
Guess I'll have to make more!

Saturday, June 20, 2009

swimmin' with the frogs

This was my dream pool (no idea where the photo's from; have had it saved on my computer for a few years, along with other home idea pictures): flowers right up to the water's edge...chairs close by to sink into after a morning swim...clear, blue water.... When I started landscaping plans for our house last year, I envisioned swimming with the scents of roses and lavender wafting by. My Darling Husband had other thoughts--keep the plants as far away from the pool as possible. His reasoning for that makes logical sense, so I've compromised on the landscaping scheme.

Well, at least our chairs are close to the water's edge, and the water becoming clear and blue is not a dream, but reality. It's becoming reality. Cleaning out a (our) pool is arduous labor, especially when that pool is inhabited by the green reptilian set and is as gooey as the bottom of a muddy Midwestern lake. I'd almost rather pay a certain pool company the $1,800 they would charge to clean it. If we had the green monetary set, that is.

Instead we have started the cleaning process ourselves. I must commend My Darling Husband for donning some old clothes and venturing into the murky waters to scoop the goo. I was the one staying (mostly) dry by carting the goo in the wheelbarrow to the compost bin. Little black tadpoles and polliwogs in dark brown leafy goo, and marina stench x 100 = gag me with a spoon...and a fork and knife!

That was yesterday. A big, strong male friend with a stronger countenance than me has offered to help My Darling Husband turn our pond back into the pool it was meant to be. Whew, thank goodness for friends! He can have all the swim time he wants when the pool is ready for occupation by humans.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

before next Tues

These are not my words, but I agree with them. I have already emailed my comment to the NIH. Those of us who value life...we should all respond to this.

On March 9, 2009 President Obama issued an executive order that opened the floodgates for funding more human embryonic stem cell experiments. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has drafted guidelines for distributing these funds. These guidelines devote your tax dollars to experiments with embryonic stem cells, from destroyed human embryos. But the only successful treatments and cures come from adult stem cells, taken from bone marrow, umbilical cord blood, fat tissue, and other body tissues. Thousands of patients have had their health improved and their lives saved with adult stem cells. Dozens of diseases and injuries including cancer, juvenile diabetes, heart disease, spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson's disease have already been treated using adult stem cells, and more treatments are being developed.
The new NIH guidelines are poor science and poor health care policy, and would divert dollars away from real treatments. Any federal dollar used for embryonic stem cell experimentation is a dollar not used for adult stem cells. This will delay adult stem cell treatments and cures. This new policy puts the health of Americans in danger. We need to put the patients first, and put federal funds toward the real treatments and real promise of adult stem cells.
If you, your spouse, your daughter, your son, your mother, your father, your relative, your friend, your neighbor, or your co-worker suffers from a disease or injury, you need to make your voice heard against taxpayer funded embryonic stem cell experiments and in favor of adult stem cell research. If you have been treated with adult stem cells, your story needs to be told.
The public comment period on these draft regulations is 30 days, and we ask that you submit comments to oppose these regulations on or before May 26, 2009. To submit your comment,
please go to this website and fill out the form with your comment.

Monday, May 18, 2009

this drives me nuts

My Darling Husband and I were discussing this situation the other day...about GM and Chrysler closing dealerships across the country. We just knew it doesn't make good sense because the dealerships pay for the cars on their lot, they aren't loaned to them until bought by the consumer. And because it doesn't make any sense, we just knew that it had to be the fed's calling this shot.
This is just another opportunity for Obama, Geitner and their socialist ilk to control. This is just another bad business decision. It will just open more opportunity for foreign automakers to enter more of the American market...more foreign cars made by foreigners. I am not anti-foreigner. I am however, anti-removing American's jobs. It reminds me of Obama and his administration demonizing the automakers for flying to D.C. on private jets. Quashing American jobs. Did you know that thousands of Americans make a living building those private jets?


Liberty Opinion: 18 May 2009
Washington's plan to save union jobs in car factories will cost Main Street America hundreds of thousands of jobs. Bill Wyckoff has a hunch that's not a great idea.

How is closing businesses good for business?
I waited 38 years for the return of the Dodge Challenger just so I could own one.
Now that I have one, I get the pleasure of driving an hour to get it serviced. The only good news about this is I love driving that car. If this were a minivan needing service, it would be a long trip.
But it could be longer soon.
I read where the hot shots on the president’s “automotive task force," the people calling all the shots at General Motors and Chrysler, want fewer dealerships. These are the same people who don’t drive or own any American cars, but they have been anointed to tell the companies what to do and tell us what cars we can buy.
Seems they found out Japanese companies have more sales per dealer. Honda sells about 1,100 cars per dealership and Chrysler sells only 400. Their solution is to close a bunch of dealerships and that will increase the sales per dealer. Really makes you wonder if any of these eggheads ever traveled to the center of this country by means other than crossing it in an airplane.
If I owned a Honda, to get it fixed, I would need to travel to another state to see a service tech. This same group seems enamored by what the auto companies in Germany and Japan do. No one in the group is old enough to remember that the good old USA had to defeat both of these countries at the same time and then we rebuilt their economies.
So what is keeping us from doing that today, and just what is the reason the foreign carmakers can build products in the US and still beat Detroit? I guarantee everyone in the administration already knows the reason, but the politically motivated solution isn’t to fix the problem. It is to pass the card check bill so all Americans get to pay for built-in labor union inefficiencies.
The reason this group of “experts” gives for closing dealerships just doesn’t hold water. Dealers pay for inventory. Dealers must also buy all that marketing literature in the show room. They must lease expensive signage from the auto manufacturer. Every month they must buy specialty tools, parts and training material, plus they all share in the national advertising expense. So what is the reason for closing them? Maybe Suzie in Detroit has to keep a spreadsheet on all of them?
I also read where they have said that fewer dealers were going to reduce competition within the same brands, allowing the remainder to boost prices and profits! Just what is this task force smoking? I guess since these companies are now owned and controlled by our government, we can just think of it as a tax increase to help the greedy folks in Detroit and Washington, D.C. Can you believe that all this time we have been getting too good of a deal on car-buying and that’s been bad for the country? Wonder where that logic was when Wal-Mart rolled up the streets in almost every town. Nowadays it is quite all right to buy everything from China at the Wal-Mart near you, and count on it that China will be supplying most of the new cars to your grandchildren.
The government's plan to close dealerships will put 150,000 more people on the unemployment line along with an equal number of people supporting those businesses. Just how can this be a good thing?
Since the people operating government motors don’t know or care anything about the cities and towns that make this country great, I thought I’d share just a few examples. Hometown car dealers spend advertising dollars locally. They sponsor all kinds of activities and events. They contribute in every conceivable part of the community plus they employ people and collect billions in taxes for their communities.
The average number of employees at the dealers being closed is 50, so closing 3,000 dealerships will put 150,000 new people on the unemployment line along with an equal number of people supporting those businesses. Just how can this be a good thing?
You may wonder why I’m spending all this energy on something that the president has already decided. I’ll give you several reasons. These dealerships were closed because the bureaucrats said in their opinion

(1) they were too small,
(2) they didn’t have enough customers,
(3) they didn’t have nice enough facilities,
(4) there were too many of them so buyers could negotiate low prices
(5) plus, they didn’t fit the European or Asian model that everyone at the Capitol loves.
With that in mind, maybe we should all think about what our government will do with the local hospitals, schools or even banks in our communities. All of those statements said about the auto industry also fit the planned consolidation of this group, and all of them are already extremely over regulated by the government.
So when universal health care becomes law and that is followed by some new vision of education, don’t say I didn’t warn you about why Uncle Sam is boarding up your local school or your community health facility.

__________________________
Kansas Liberty columnist Bill Wyckoff is an occasional contributor to the Wall Street Journal and Fox Business News.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

paper vs. lace

Fellow American patriots:
tomorrow (Thurs., May 14) there is a telephone tea party. It works by you signing up here, then be at your phone number @ 8:30pm Eastern Time. Listen, then you can ask questions of the two governors.

I was perusing the new Country Curtains catalog that the mailman was kind enough to deliver today. On page three this scherenschnitte-style curtain screamed out to me for joyous admiration. How pretty.
Reminds me of cool spring evenings with the kitchen curtains fluttering in the breeze. It also reminded me of some papercuttings seen on Turkey Feathers blog and Allsorts.

Monday, May 11, 2009

there's room in this inn

Have you seen this? A Jewish family was denied a hotel room because of the owner's racism. Amazing how it's happening again in Austria, the birthplace of that horrible man Adolph Hitler.


If you're ever in The Big City, a stay here would be nice (or this one is nice, but I've not stayed at this one. I went to this one to listen to jazz). The staff is welcoming and the location is superb...right in the heart of a scenic area. The original buildings in the neighborhood date from the 1920s.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

mother may I

...wish you Happy Mother's Day to those of you blessed to be such.

This picture is by Mary Cassatt, who is one of my favorite artists. I like her subject's tender poses, her soft use of color, depiction of everyday life and her maternal subject matter.


I like all of her works, especially her woodcut-style fashioned after Japanese prints, but this particular work I have on a magnet that I bought here. If you enjoy looking at art, the Wichita Art Museum is worth a visit. Take your mom, or someone else, or just you.

Monday, April 6, 2009

the difference between a man and a woman

re: Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. My Darling Husband and I both are in need of new eye spectacles, says the optometrist.

We don't just get our eyes examined and choose our new eyeglass frames simultaneously on one appointment. Well, I don't. My Darling Husband does. He came out of the examining rooms and went straight for the frame boutique. A mere 15 minutes and 8 frames later, he is the proud owner of new eyeglasses.

Me on the other hand? Eye examination...check. Into the frame boutique, spend an hour, select 5 frames to borrow (an advantage of our small-town optometrist). Go home, have My Darling Husband take snapshots of me in various frames, email snaps to family and friends for their wisdom, mull over their replies and the frames for a week. Repeat process twice.

One month later I am still wearing my current prescription. My Darling Husband just doesn't understand...choose one already! But I can't just choose the 8th frame I pick up. This is a very important decision that affects every day of my life with those glasses. I want an exact copy of my current glasses. They're like a pair of well-fitting jeans--just have to stick with what fits and looks good.

So I'm off to a different frame boutique at a different optometrist's office tomorrow. Maybe the 20th pair will be the charm.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

and now for dessert

Happy St. Patrick's Day! No parades here in The Small Town for this day, but individuals have decorated themselves and their houses in hopes of being Irish. Or to ward off pinching. When My Darling Husband was a wee lad, he tainted his family's new gallon of milk with green food coloring one St. Patrick's Day. Apparently, the sight of cereal swimming in green milk was unappetizing, so his mother went and bought a new gallon of milk. My Darling Husband was designated as the sole consumer of the green milk.

So, in honor of him and St. Patrick, here's some new green milk to go with the brownie and mint chocolate ice cream.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

how fresh would you like your steak?

Country roadkill. We sped by this on the way to church and back. Sorry for the udderly bad picture. I was hoping to snap it with the cow still on the shoulder of the road, but the creature had been moved over to the ditch by the time I returned to the scene. I'm guessing it escaped from the pasture and got hit by a vehicle. What a loss for the farmer. I've seen all the skunks, racoons, dogs, cats, coyotes, wolves, armadillos, turtles, and opossums for roadkill. Those are roadkill both in town and country. Cows?--only in the country.

Friday, February 20, 2009

it was a fine china kind of day

Valentine's Day is a good reason (or excuse) to bake and decorate some pretty sugar cookies. Hearts, tulips and butterflies. The tulips must be red. My parents and grandparents always had red tulips in their gardens and yards, the kind with the yellow inner basins and black stamens. Of course now I believe that a tulip garden is incomplete without those specific red ones. Wish I knew the variety name. (If you think you know what tulip variety I'm referring to, would you be a dear & leave a comment saying so?) I'd love to plant some. Anyway, I baked and decorated some sugar cookies.
But grandma always said "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach".
Since My Darling Husband is a Meat Consumer of the First Order, I reused the small heart cookie cutter on the sausage. Heart pancakes and heart sausages baked with love for breakfast. The first use of our wedding china. My advice on the matter of love through body parts is thus--if you really truly want to reach his heart through his stomach, have breakfast ready prior to noon.
Then dinner at a historic hotel-turned apartment building/event space in This Small Town. A local school held the dinner as a fundraiser. We were impressed with how beautiful the evening was. The room's striking architectural features were highlighted by the school's frugal decorating: delicate pink balloons, red jelly beans in a glass hurricane to anchor a candle, vases of single red roses. The light dancing off the crystal was so pretty. All the servers, cooks and hosts were from the school: high school students, parents and staff. A couple of school personnel volunteered as entertainers by serenading with piano tunes all the evening long. Lovely.

Monday, February 16, 2009

um, please don't send the $500

Oh! Our lucky day! My Darling Husband spotted this scam in his email today. It's just too funny so I had to share it with you. Wow, that's great. The FBI is allowing us to win this money. And these people verified themselves. so so so so funny


From: Federal Bureau Of Investigation
Sent: Monday, February 16, 2009 5:00:12 PM
Subject: Federal Bureau Of Investigation ( Atm Card Payment )

Anti-Terrorist And Monetory Crimes Division

FBI Headquarters In Washington, D.C.
Federal Bureau Of Investigation
...
Attn: Beneficiary,
This is to Officially inform you that it has come to our notice and we have thoroughly completed an Investigation with the help of our Intelligence Monitoring Network System that you legally won the sum of $800,000.00 USD from a Lottery Company outside the United States of America. During our investigation we discovered that your e-mail won the money from an Online Balloting System and we have authorized this winning to be paid to you via a Certified Cashier's Check.
Normally, it will take up to 10 business days for an International Check to be cashed by your local bank. We have successfully notified this company on your behalf that funds are to be drawn from a registered bank within the United States Of America so as to enable you cash the check instantly without any delay, henceforth the stated amount of $800,000.00 USD has been deposited with Bank Of America. We have completed this investigation and you are hereby approved to receive the winning prize as we have verified the entire transaction to be Safe and 100% risk free, due to the fact that the funds have been deposited at Bank Of America you will be required to settle the following bills directly to the Lottery Agent in-charge of this transaction whom is located in Lagos, Nigeria.

According to our discoveries, you were required to pay for the following -
(1) Deposit Fee's (Fee's paid by the company for the deposit into an American Bank which is - Bank Of America )
(2) Cashier's Check Conversion Fee (Fee for converting the Wire Transfer payment into a Certified Cashier's Check )
(3) Shipping Fee's (This is the charge for shipping the Cashier's Check to your home address and this fee includes Insurance )
The total amount for everything is $500.00 (Five Hundred-US Dollars). We have tried our possible best to indicate that this $500.00 should be deducted from your winning prize but we found out that the funds have already been deposited at Bank Of America and cannot be accessed by anyone apart from you the winner, therefore you will be required to pay the required fee's to the Agent in-charge of this transaction via Western Union Money Transfer Or Money Gram. In order to proceed with this transaction, you will be required to contact the agent in-charge (Mr. Benson Edward) via e-mail. Kindly look below to find appropriate contact information: CONTACT AGENT NAME: MR. BENSON EDWARD Telephone Number : +234-7080480970
You will be required to e-mail him with the following information:
FULL NAME:ADDRESS:CITY:STATE:ZIP CODE:DIRECT CONTACT NUMBER: You will also be required to request Western Union or Money Gram details on how to send the required $500.00 in order to immediately ship your prize of $800,000.00 USD via Certified Cashier's Check drawn from Bank Of America, also include the following transaction code in order for him to immediately identify this transaction : EA2948-910.


This letter will serve as proof that the Federal Bureau Of Investigation is authorizing you to pay the required $500.00 ONLY to Mr. Benson Edward via information in which he shall send to you, if you do not receive your winning prize of $800,000.00 we shall be held responsible for the loss and this shall invite a penalty of $3,000 which will be made PAYABLE ONLY to you (The Winner). ...
Please find below an authorized signature which has been signed by the FBI Director- Robert Mueller, also below is the FBI NSB (National Security Branch Seal)

Authorized Signature
NSB SEAL ABOVE
NOTE: In order to ensure your check gets delivered to you ASAP, you are advised to immediately contact Mr. Benson Edward via contact information provided above and make the required payment of $500.00 to information in which he shall provide to you

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Calgon, take me away!

That's what I might be saying soon.
My sub-heading for this blog is "Take the girl out of the big city--can't take the big city out of the girl". I lived in The Big City for many years until last September, when I married a man whose only drawback (how I saw it back then) was that he lives in The Small Town. I thought, "Aaahhh! No popping into the local yarn shops or Hobby Lobby to check out the clearance crafts or the mall on any ol' day. Too much quiet. And less visiting with my family. What'll I do?????"

What I've done is what everybody should do when they move to a new place, whether it's a sprawling metropolis or a self-contained little town. I have become involved. There's new friends added to the old friends, church and church functions, work, knitting group at the local library each week, and various local small-town events. I've learned to live with fewer shops and that's been good because I am actually finishing projects instead of just salivating over yarn and pretty home goods at the shops. I can visit the shops when we travel. And...My Darling Husband has become my family.
Last week My Darling Husband came home from his work with the news that he's been laid off.
Whuh?!
Mental thud.
Where did that come from?
I practically just moved here!

...and I like it here now!!!

I've pleasantly discovered that you can take the big city out of this gal. We might have to move because My Darling Husband's line of work is specialized and there's only the one company around here that could hire him. There's no market here for him to start a company doing his line of work. If we do move to a large city, I'll miss the quiet, the three-car traffic jams, the general politeness, the easily formed friendships, the quick drive to the countryside. I'll need lots of bubble baths. At least for a time.

The blog sub-heading has got to be revised.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

a sample history lesson

A man emailed me to say he didn't understand about samplers...what are they? I know it was a man because I personally know the fellow. Anyway, for all the uninitiated wanna-be needleworkers and anybody else reading this, here's a short history of samplers:
Samplers began as...samples prior to the 20th century. They were samples of a young girl's embroidery skills in mastering various embroidery stitches and patterns. They developed into embroidered pictures and commemoration pieces.

For additional history reading, go here.

Here are some of my favorites from the book Samplers, by Susan Mayor & Diana Fowle.
This is a fine example of an early sample. Definitely a conglomeration of the embroiderer's various stitches.
Moving on to the picture/commemoration style samplers of later years....
Do you have pictures of your own samplers on your blog or Flickr that we can see? If so, leave a comment with the location on today's post and I'll link to them.

Back to modern times. My Darling Husband and I traveled to A Nearby City for an event last weekend. The hotel we stayed at was quite charming. It was built in the 1920s in the Tudor style. The hallways were even a maze, just like a castle. It was so charming that each room has a balcony, and each balcony has a swing! Love-a-lee.