Easy Bake

I told this story on Facebook, and was informed that it is adorable, so I got to thinking I should write it down so I do not forget.

Yesterday was my 49th birthday. I don't expect a fuss over my birthday. Maybe when I get into the 80s, I'll start wanting more fuss. But it's sweet that my family still makes a minor-league fuss some years.

This time my Little Miss A (who, incidentally, is now 10 years old, and is shooting up in height, and is going to need a new nickname here pretty soon) wanted to bake me a cake. She agonized for several days over what type of cake to make, and finally settled on a carrot cake. I love carrot cake so I approved. The only catch is, she really wanted to bake it with her Easy Bake Oven. And the Easy Bake Oven requires an old-fashioned 100-watt bulb to bake, and hers had burned out. It had been in the back of my mind to hunt a few of those down against the coming incandescent lightbulb famine, but I had not gotten to it yet, so she ended up using a soft white bulb, and it really did not get the oven very hot. So the cake did not turn out the way she envisioned it.

Still, I blew out my candle and I made my wish and I ate my carrot cake. I have a very, very sweet daughter. I'm so thankful for her, thankful that when Barry and I thought our family was complete with two children that God knew better and blessed us with one more. She is so precious to me. I cannot imagine life without her.

Update: One of my sisters in law sent me this just now. :) So adorable.

The Christmas dinner table

Kransekake.

Orange cheesecake.

Placecards made from some gift wrap that happily coordinated with my Christmas dishes.

The table set, ready to go except for the hot dishes which were not on yet.

You think you can let down your guard at the holidays? Think again.

Zombie defense awareness does NOT take time off, even, or especially, not at the holidays.

Listening to one of my favorite Christmas albums

I needed some Christmas cheer while urging my surly family out the door this morning to their respective schools, so I put on one of my very favorite Christmas CDs. And I rediscovered the beautiful "There Are Angels Hovering 'Round." Such a lovely, simple song. I found several versions of the lyrics on line, but here they are as on this CD:

There are angels hovering 'round.
There are angels hovering 'round.
There are angels, angels hovering 'round.

To sing in harmony.
To sing in harmony.
To sing, to sing in harmony.

The shepherds on their knees,
The shepherds on their knees,
The shepherds, shepherds on their knees.

The Child in her arms,
The Child in her arms,
The Child, the Child in her arms.

Oh world without end,
Oh world without end.
Oh world, oh world without end.

There are angels hovering 'round.
There are angels hovering 'round.
There are angels, angels hovering 'round.

I especially like that fifth verse.

Quote from another track:

Norwegian bachelor farmers. They don't reproduce. Why are there still so many of them?

By the way, when I went to add that Amazon link, I was amazed to find out how expensive the CD is now. Buy the MP3 if you want a copy for yourself, it's much more affordable. Oh, and you can preview the tracks, so listen to this pretty song for yourself. :)

Ugh

Good thing we had our family celebration on Sunday, because yesterday I got sick. I'm so glad there are not people depending on me to feed them a big dinner today because it just wouldn't be happening. I'm having fever and chills and a horrible headache. I'm not being very nice to anybody today.

Thanksgiving

We had our Thanksgiving Sunday afternoon. Here we are just before asking the blessing. Left to right, around the table: My mother, Maryanna Root; Barry; Kieffer; my father, Marvin Root; and our youngest, Lil Miss A.

Thanksgiving Turkey Dinner Clean-Up Made Easi(er) with a Presto Pressure Cooker

Last spring I bought a 23-quart Presto pressure cooker at the recommendation of Judy Laquidara. I have used it much more than I guessed I would! I am now in a routine of making turkey or chicken stock and canning it, and using it just about as fast as I can make it. I thought I'd tell you about how this helped this Thanksgiving.

We had a 20-pound bird which I roasted unstuffed this year. I rubbed herbed olive oil beneath the skin and roasted it breast side down and it came out very nice and moist. Barry carved it, doing a great job of boning most of the meat as he went, so after dinner, instead of having to face my usual after-dinner chore of boning the rest of the meat, that part was done for me. I emptied the roaster into my Presto pressure cooker. I have developed the habit of keeping a freezer bag handy in my freezer into which go all the vegetable scraps we produce - onion skins and root ends, carrot and parsnip tops, potato peelings, even apple cores and in this case a pineapple core. I dumped that bag into my pressure cooker, too, and then I filled the pressure canner with hot tap water to the maximum fill line. I cooked all that for an hour at about 15 pounds pressure, then let it cool down on the back porch. I drained off all the broth, threw out all the other stuff, chilled the broth further so that I could easily defat it, then canned the broth, again in the pressure canner, at 11 pounds pressure, 25 minutes (quart jars). I should probably can some pints because sometimes we don't need a whole quart of broth.

Extracting all possible flavor from the bones of the bird makes me feel thrifty. :o)

Blaze Orange Daughter

Britta is home for Thanksgiving, and Barry's sister Ronda, her husband Bill and their little girl are also here from Texas. Bill has been trying to bring in his first deer. This afternoon he took Britta out with him, and she asked me to take a picture of her in blaze orange.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving service over at the church tonight. I always wish I could stay home and then I'm always so glad I didn't, once I'm there. It was wonderful. I just love my church.

Memorial Day Remembrance 2009

An Elf!

Benjamin's Song, Funny Bulletins and Nativity Sets

Today at church Barry and I sat at opposite ends of the pew, as usual, like bookends, keeping the children sitting up straight with their pages all facing in the right direction, so to speak. (Last week we sat side by side for the first time in I don't know how long. I loved it. Today we were back to normal.) We sang "It Is Well With My Soul," which I always think of as Benjamin's song. Benjamin was my nephew, my brother's eldest child. We received a phone call one awful day in his mother's pregnancy with him, telling us that Benjamin had died in utero. An hour or so after that we had to go to our church small group study and we sang "It Is Well With My Soul." Ever since then, it's been Benjamin's song to me. After a couple of years, I got to the point where I could sing it without breaking down, but then this morning for some reason it all just came rushing back again and I went all teary over it and couldn't sing. And I was a wreck for the rest of the service. Every song made me cry, all the prayers made me cry, singing the Doxology made me cry... Oh brother. Funny how that can happen.

The one thing that did not make me cry was this hilarious picture on the cover of the bulletin. It's from Augsburg Fortress Press, and the note says it is a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (16th century). Look at some of those faces in the crowd! Methinks Bruegel was a frustrated caricature artist. Look at the group down here in the left bottom corner. "Be nice to Bruegel, and if he ever offers to put you in one of his paintings, say thank you, but no."

And then we came home for lunch, and finally put up the Nativity set and got out Christmas decorations. We were really slackers this year. We usually put them up the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Part of it is that after living in no-kitchen chaos for months, I don't want anything extra, don't want to see messes, don't want to have to hunt for anything that's been put in a slightly different place from usual, and so I am less than thrilled with the idea of getting out decorations, which amount in my mind to "just more stuff." But I stifled the humbug that is me and we hauled the boxes up from the storeroom.

First was the Annual Assembly and Arrangement of the Nativity Scene, supervised by Maria, starring a cast of porcelain figures, grunt work done by Lil Miss A and Master K...


... followed closely by the Annual Feline Inspection of the Nativity Scene and Comfy Nap By the Stable, starring Briggs Stahl.

Lil Miss A's Gingerbread House

Lil Miss A and I drove to Waukon so she could participate in this morning's annual gingerbread house decorating activity for schoolchildren in the area, sponsored by Kitchen Krafts. Here she is, back home, just before she started eating her gingerbread house.

While she was decorating her house, I got groceries, filled up the car ($1.559 a gallon!) and bought chicken feed and window washer fluid at the feed store.

Driving was a bit scary but we were fine, especially with 100 pounds of chicken feed in the trunk on the way home to keep us on the road!

Once back in New Albin, we stopped by the annual Karen Lee and Daughters Holiday Craft Sale. I bought a handcrafted graduation card for Miss B (Lil Miss A picked it out), a plate of cookies (also selected by Lil Miss A, naturally) and a video transfer DVD produced by Errin Wilker of some old movie film of New Albin in the 1930s, coupled with some video of Shooky Fink Days during the 1990s. I have not looked at it yet.


Finally, back home, I opened the mail and found this neat postcard of St. Peter's when it was known as the German Evangelical church. (Some of the old timers in town still just call St. Peter's "the German church." This is the same site as the brick building built in the 1950s. I wonder why the lot was fenced? The postcard is not in the greatest shape, as it was torn out of an album (there is black paper residue on the back), but what a nice shot of our church! I bought this on eBay. The seller stated he could see part of what he thought was a 1907 postmark. I am not seeing it. But it's old. It's a RPPC. Great to add to the collection.

First Winter Storm

And it happened while Barry was driving our two remaining guests -- college students -- back to college in the Twin Cities.

It's a long drive in the best of road conditions, 3-1/2 hours each way. It was quite a bit longer than that because of black ice, blowing snow and slippery roads. And also because Barry had his EMT gear in the car and could not help stopping to assist a couple of times. Once he was first on scene. He said it was a new and wonderful experience for him to see the relief in people's eyes when he walked up with his EMT bag with its luminescent strips and offered to help. Nobody was hurt bad, but he was able to sort out what was what, secure the scene and then hand off to the firemen who eventually answered the 911 call he encouraged one of the women involved to make.

Miss B was with him, for which I was thankful. It's always good not to be alone on a scary drive. And one of the two college students, at least (not the one who is actually related to us but the other one) was very appreciative of the ride home and the risks Barry and Miss B took to return him to school.

Barry's job is extremely tenuous right now, but he is not as worried as one might think, as he is hoping to use it as an opportunity to go back to school and become a nurse. He'd really rather become a paramedic, but their wage tops out quite a bit lower than that of a nurse. Maybe someday he can be both.

Working on a Thanksgiving weekend menu

It's complicated this year - more complicated than usual. Still fun!

• We have 2 guests arriving Wednesday noonish, 1 more arriving
  around suppertime Wednesday, 1 more arriving around noon on Thursday, the two Wednesday noon ones leaving Friday morning, another 1 arriving Friday noon, and then we need to drive the Thursday and Friday noon ones home to Minneapolis on Sunday afternoon. Not sure when the Wednesday night one wants to go home but we only have to get him to La Crosse.
• We have 2 guests who keep kosher, more or less; 2 Baptists who at least aren't supposed to be drinking alcohol, though I think they probably do anyway; and 1 guest who probably won't want to eat meat on Friday since he's Catholic.

This is why I have to plan the whole weekend's meals out in advance and not try to wing it. I'd never make it out alive. :o)

Taps

This morning's Memorial Day service here in New Albin was well attended and wonderful. Miss B read the Gettysburg Address, and did a beautiful job; very reverent and expressive. And I'm not the only one who thought so; people who weren't related to her felt the same.

Among other things, they honored the gentlemen who are still living who founded the local veterans post in 1946. Seven wonderful old fellows, some still on their own feet, a couple in wheelchairs, a couple with walkers. One struggled to his feet to return the salute offered him. The high school band played a couple of numbers and did quite well (better than usual). Afterward, they played Taps and did a volley at the memorial in the town square and then again out at the city cemetery. After each volley, all the kids in the area dive into the grass; I didn't know what they were doing, but Lil Miss A informed me they get to collect all the shell casings, which they get to keep after the casings are counted and checked to make sure they are no longer live. She got two.

And then Miss B came home and applied online for an Air Force ROTC scholarship in nursing and/or Subsaharan African Studies! It isn't as impulsive as it sounds. She has planned on this for some time, and May is the month to do it, and it suddenly occurred to her that May is nearly over. It didn't hurt that she sat next to Maj. John Colsch, USAF, Ret., whose presentation brought her and me to tears.

We seem to have skipped directly from winter to summer with no springtime. Today it is hot and steamy.

I leave you with some lyrics to Taps, three verses (there are others, but these were read this morning):

Day is done,
gone the sun,
From the hills,
from the lake,
From the skies.
All is well,
safely rest,
God is nigh.

Fades the light;
And afar
Goeth day,
And the stars
Shineth bright,
Fare thee well;
Day has gone,
Night is on.

Thanks and praise,
For our days,
'Neath the sun,
Neath the stars,
'Neath the sky,
As we go,
This we know,
God is nigh.

Okay, so I missed a day.

But it was Mother's Day, and being with my Mom, and being a Mom, was more important than blogging. Okay?

I was going to take a picture of what I made for our moms but didn't get around to it. I made them each a big, sturdy tote bag with bluebirds on it. I used 20-inch tapestry pillow panels, one per bag, with the rest of it dark blue cotton duck from the good people at James Thompson. I imagined my mom hauling everything she owns to church with hers each week (they are pretty much responsible for everything at Beth Immanuel) and my mother-in-law happily hauling booty around the flea markets in hers (she's a great flea market shopper). I feel a special challenge to keep up with my sister, who quilts like nobody's business, and my sister-in-law, who does all kinds of crafty stuff. They are always coming up with thoughtful handmade gifts. I'm not really even in their league, but hey, I made tote bags!


My mom and dad drove down to visit with us for Mother's Day and took us out to lunch at Little Miami in Freeburg, MN. Most of the food was good. Mom's cod had an off flavor, sadly, but the rest of us enjoyed our lunches. My dad and I both ordered prime rib sandwiches which turned out to be about a half a cow on slices of toast (we each had one, so that was one whole cow between the two of us). Really tasty! Really BIG!

We relaxed around the house all afternoon. I made a cute sundress from pre-shirred fabric for Little Miss A. Then after the kids were asleep we grown-ups stayed up and watched Good Night Mister Tom from Netflix.

Now it's Monday. Back to reality, back to work.

Annual April Fool's Roundup

I got rickrolled not once, but twice, with two different April Fool's Day gags: First, Felicia Day got me with this. And then Blogger got me. With this. Am I gullible or what?

FireFlyFans.net had two contenders. One was pretty lame. (Sorry Chrisisall, it was.) The other was not too bad.

Finally, the Wagner and Griswold Society forum header was backward. All day long the mods and admins claimed not to be able to see anything funky about it, while the rest of us peons insisted there was something wrong.

Ground-Breaking Conjoined Peep Quadruplet Separation Surgery

From the Peep Research Institute:


Click on the picture to see details of this delicate surgery.

All I Want for My Birthday

My birthday and Mother's Day are pretty close together and we're usually broke at about that time of year, so usually I tell the family at my birthday, "Don't get me anything, save it for Mother's Day," and when Mother's Day comes around I say, "Don't worry about it, I just had my birthday." Not this year.

This year I told everybody that what I want for my birthday is one day to do nothing but sew, nobody asking me to do anything else. It may be spent making Miss B's prom dress, but if I manage to finish that early then maybe I can quilt.

And what I want for Mother's Day is to go see this:



Yeah.

Snow Day

We canceled church for the second time this season due to blizzard-like conditions. After family services in the living room, K. and I made rosettes.