Monday, July 12, 2010

Yet another weekend dealing with illness. I have no idea what’s going on, but since we got back from California it seems that one or the other of the kids has been sick every weekend. It’s very baffling and frustrating.

This time it’s a stomach bug of some kind. We thought maybe it was food poisoning, but it lingers and Beau now has it, too. Jesse started puking at breakfast on Saturday. By that evening he was keeping down bread and Fresca (we don’t have any ginger ale in the house, but I’m getting some today). Sunday morning he begged for “real nulk,” which is PediaSure. I was leery of giving it to him, but I did. He guzzled it down and promptly yakked it back up about 5 minutes later.

He won’t drink PediaLyte, so he went back to Fresca and nibbling on bread. He kept that down and by dinner time he was feeling good again. I made plain pasta for him, which he scarfed down. He was hungry.

Meantime, Beau is complaining of the queasies. This dispelled our food poisoning thoughts - we had BBQ grilled chicken Friday for dinner and thought that maybe Jesse fondled the raw chicken when it was on the kitchen counter and Daddy was outside getting the grill lit. Who knows at this point?

I made the mistake of making cupcakes yesterday. Jesse wanted one, so I gave him half of one. He played for another hour and then came bedtime and all was well.

Beau woke up at about 2am feeling nauseous. And then the crying started at 3am - Jesse has puked in his bed. Poor Beau had to clean it up - I still have my SPR despite having borne two children. My mother was wrong - that puker thing does not diminish one iota with motherhood.

Please pray for Beau - I have to go to work today, although I may try to speed through tasks to leave early if things are bad enough here at home. At this point I’m praying that Molly and I don’t get it, too.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Someone asked my mom why we post about food so much on Facebook - “we” being my family, probably Mom and I, since we post about food a lot. Mom and I have two answers, but they’re similar around the idea of providing help for other cooks.

For my mother, everything is a ministry opportunity. She consciously looks for ways to minister to others in order to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. One of the ways that she does this is through food. She provides meals when folks are in need. She hosts dinners and teas and luncheons in her home for her neighbor ladies. And then there’s her tea business, which is another way to provide (although, for a profit, of course, because it is a business) for others. And through it all, she rarely misses a chance to share Jesus and her faith with the people she helps.

For me, I wish I could say the same. Sure, I find ministry opportunities, but I don’t go seeking them out like my mother does. But I do want to help people and posting recipes is one way I can lend a hand. In my case there are two main reasons I post recipes both here and on Facebook: 1) because I have a lot of friends who also like to cook and 2) because I know there are many others who have milk issues like Beau.

In the past 5 years I have had to adapt many recipes that call for milk into recipes that are milk free so that Beau can eat them and so that I’m not making two meals at a time - one for Beau and one for the rest of us. That’s a waste of time, energy, and food. And I as enjoying the challenge of either finding recipes that will work or modifying them so that they’ll work. I’ve come up with some good adaptations that are delicious and still pretty easy to make.

If my posting a recipe inspires a novice to try something new, then I’ve met my goal. If my posting a recipe inspires an old hand to experiment, then I’ve met my goal. If my posting a recipe helps to bring variety to a boring family menu, then I’ve met my goal. If my posting a recipe helps someone with milk issues, then I’ve met my goal.

For a foodie, gourmand, wanna-be chef, or whatever, talking about food is only natural. If food isn’t your thing, that’s OK. What is your thing? That’s what you’ll talk about most. It may not interest everyone, but it may interest one and that’s OK and you’ve met your goal.

There’s a new blog link list in the sidebar. Now added is the Gourmandery list - food blogs. It was past time to do this, really. And then I just added a new one to the list this morning because Beau’s cousin Karen (of the lavender olive oil cake last weekend) has brought to my attention another lovely olive oil cake from cook eat Fret - zucchini olive oil cake with lemon crunch glaze.

Time to get baking…

Friday, July 09, 2010

Months ago, Jared Wilson posted a prayer from The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers. I think it was actually the prayer called The Valley of Vision. I liked the prayer and promptly put the book on my wishlist as a gift idea for Beau.

To my happy surprise, I received a copy for my birthday back in March. We have been slowly reading through it as a bedtime devotional on the nights that we are actually able to go to bed at the same time. Lately, that has been rare because of the kids or one or the other of us being utterly exhausted. But on the night’s that we’re able to read one of the prayers, I have been struck by the beauty of the language, the total submission to the authority of God, and the simplicity of the gratitude and understanding of God’s grace and mercy.

God is God and He is good and His mercies endure forever.

In Prayer

O Lord, in prayer I launch far out into the eternal world, and on that broad ocean my soul triumphs over all evils on the shores of mortality. Time, with its gay amusements and cruel disappointments never appears so inconsiderate as then.

In prayer I see myself as nothing; I find my heart going after Thee with intensity, and long with vehement thirst to live to Thee. Blessed be the strong gales of the Spirit that speed me on my way to the New Jerusalem.

In prayer all things here below vanish, and nothing seems important but holiness of heart and the salvation of others.

In prayer all my worldly cares, fears, anxieties disappear, and are of as little significance as a puff of wind.

In prayer my soul inwardly exults with lively thoughts at what Thou art doing for Thy church, and I long that Thou shouldest get Thyself a great name from sinners returning to Zion.

In prayer I am lifted above the frowns and flatteries of life, and taste heavenly joys; entering into the eternal world I can give myself to Thee with all my heart, to be Thine for ever.

In prayer I can place all my concerns in Thy hands, to be entirely at Thy disposal, having no will or interest of my own.

In prayer I can intercede for my friends, ministers, sinners, the church, Thy kingdom to come, with greatest freedom, ardent hopes, as a son to his father, as a lover to the beloved.

Help me to be all prayer and never to cease praying.

Amen.

Remember that free HBO/Cinemax weekend we had where I recorded a plethora of movies? We finally watched one of them. It took three attempts because we were dealing with Molly’s sleep issues (that seem to have resolved since our overnight at Marmie/Pop’s last weekend, thank the Lord).

I haven’t seen the Ang Lee directed Hulk with Eric Bana, although I guess I should since I like Bana. And I’m intrigued that Lee directed the beautiful Sense and Sensibility and then moved on to a special effects-comic book movie like Hulk. Anyway…

We managed to watch The Incredible Hulk starring Edward Norton the other night. I liked it. Beau fell asleep with 10 minutes to go. What on earth?

Here are my brief thoughts - slightly spoilerish:

1. Edward Norton was good as Bruce Banner.

2. Tim Roth has the acting chops for evil, however he was not nearly buff enough to play that role. I mean really, a special forces soldier is not going to have the naked chest that Roth has, even past age 40. He isn’t flabby, but he clearly doesn’t work out either.

3. William Hurt - didn’t realize it was him until about halfway through. He was good.

4. Liv Tyler - she’s one of those women who is either strikingly beautiful or strikingly not beautiful and I guess that’s why she works well as a model. I know she had a baby before this movie came out and I think the little bit of extra weight she seemed to be carrying suited her. Rather than looking like a skinny-winny, she looked like a real woman. And by extra weight I’m talking maybe 5-10 lbs.

5. Special Effects - very good. I liked the transformations from Banner to Hulk. Hulk scary. Yowsah.

6. Last scene - loved. I know there’s an Avengers movie in production. I’m really hoping that pans out with the original actors in their respective roles. That would be very, very cool.

TIH gets 3.5 stars. It’s not great, but it was fun. Scary for younger kids, though.

Thursday, July 08, 2010

I finished listening to The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova last night on my way home from having dinner with some of my small group friends.

Late one night, exploring her father’s library, a young woman finds an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters. The letters are all addressed to “My dear and unfortunate successor”, and they plunge her into a world she never dreamed of: a labyrinth where the secrets of her father’s past and her mother’s mysterious fate connect to an inconceivable evil hidden in the depths of history.

The letters provide links to one of the darkest powers that humanity has ever known, and to a centuries-long quest to find the source of that darkness and wipe it out. It is a quest for the truth about Vlad the Impaler, the medieval ruler whose barbarous reign formed the basis of the legend of Dracula. Generations of historians have risked their reputations, their sanity, and even their lives to learn the truth about Vlad the Impaler and Dracula. Now one young woman must decide whether to take up this quest herself, to follow her father in a hunt that nearly brought him to ruin years ago, when he was a vibrant young scholar and her mother was still alive.

What does the legend of Vlad the Impaler have to do with the modern world? Is it possible that the Dracula of myth truly existed, and that he has lived on, century after century, pursuing his own unknowable ends? The answers to these questions cross time and borders, as first the father and then the daughter search for clues, from dusty Ivy League libraries to Istanbul, Budapest, and the depths of Eastern Europe. In city after city, in monasteries and archives, in letters and in secret conversations, the horrible truth emerges about Vlad the Impaler’s dark reign, and about a time-defying pact that may have kept his awful work alive down through the ages.

I’m not a huge fan of the vampire genre, but I had seen some good reviews of this novel.

Generally, I liked it. It has a slower pace than much of what I normally read and it is thick with history albeit fictionalized. The audio version has two narrators, male and female, which makes it easier to follow the first person telling of the story.

I do not love this book, though. I found it plodding at times, especially toward the end. The letter format of the story-telling was slightly tedious, especially toward the end. And I found the climax to be anti-climactic.

Do I recommend the book? Yes, as I said, I enjoyed it generally. I give The Historian 3.5 stars.

So what am I reading now? My mp3 player is running The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. My nightstand holds Bloodthirsty by Marshall Karp.

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

3:00pm, returned from a field trip to HQ. The thermometer in my car read 104F.

Ugh.

It’s really, really hot here this week.

A HEAT ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 11 PM EDT THIS EVENING.

STRONG HIGH PRESSURE WILL REMAIN OVER THE MID-ATLANTIC TODAY. HIGH TEMPERATURES ARE EXPECTED TO BE AROUND 100 DEGREES. THE COMBINATION OF HEAT AND HUMIDITY WILL PRODUCE HEAT INDEX VALUES OF AROUND 105 DEGREES DURING THE AFTERNOON AND EARLY EVENING HOURS.

It’s 0930 and the current temp is already 90F.

Fortunately, our AC is keeping up with the heat. Unfortunately, poor Molly Ann seems to have the hottest room in our house. Our house faces south so she gets all day sunshine and we think that the placement of the desk over her vent is keeping the cool air from moving efficiently in her room. The vent is not obstructed - the desk is open, but the air is not moving despite the vent being open.

We have a box fan and we set it up last night, but it wouldn’t turn on. Would you believe that is our only fan? It’s a good thing our AC works. *knocks wood* Anyway, Beau is heading to Walmart to buy a fan for Molly’s room, if there are any still to be had.

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

I finished reading a fun book yesterday. Chris at Rude Cactus mentioned it a couple of weeks ago and since I’ve tried books that he’s mentioned in the past and thoroughly enjoyed them, I thought I’d try this one, too. I quickly looked it up at the library website, saw that it was not available in an audio version and promptly put the hardcover on hold.

The first novel of Marshall Karp, The Rabbit Factory is a fun detective novel in the classic sense.

Welcome to Lamaar Studios. Once a small Southern California animation house, it has grown into an entertainment conglomerate encompassing movies, television, music, video games, and a sprawling theme park called Familyland.

When an actor portraying Familyland’s beloved mascot, Rambunctious Rabbit, is brutally murdered on park grounds, Lamaar executives fear that their idyllic image of ‘50s America will be shattered. Feeling pressure from the studio, LAPD Detectives Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs must conduct their investigation while avoiding the public eye.

But as more murders are committed, Lomax and Biggs uncover a sinister plot. Someone has a vendetta against Lamaar, a vendetta worth killing for. With the media closing in and political pressure mounting, the partners must race to discover the Lamaar-hating madman before he brings the family entertainment giant to its knees.

The mystery is intriguing and takes several surprising turns as the story progresses. The characters are colorful and hilarious and touching. The dialogue is very witty. I highly recommend the book. I’m looking forward to reading Karp’s 3 other novels. I give this one 4.5 stars.

Warning: There is adult and sexual content and language.

Bonus Material: Karp has a blog - Lomax & Biggs - that I’ve added to my list in the sidebar because I have a feeling I’ll be visiting often.

On Sunday, we headed west to The New Homestead to spend the 4th with my parents and Uncle Bill. The morning was a flurry of activity - prepping food, prepping an overnight bag, prepping the kids, packing the car. No matter how long you spend away from home, when you have a child under 2 years old there’s always too much crap that goes along for the ride. The one item we ended up not using at all was the pack-n-play, so I think we can probably get rid of that all together, but we won’t just yet.

Food we contributed included:

1. Beau’s homemade buns for sliders. I totally forgot we also needed buns for the brats, but we made do eating those sans buns.

2. Moroccan beef kabobs. I had a seasoning packet for these that I bought in Morocco at Epcot 2 years ago. We all agreed that it was not nearly as flavorful as we expected. I’ll say it - they were boring. I could have seasoned them better myself. The beef was good, though.

3. Grilled Potatoes. Uncle Bill said it best - ultimately, while they taste good, they are potatoes and maybe not worth the work to grill them. Especially in beastly heat, which we had on Sunday (although today will be worse - forecast high for today is 102F. Kill me now.) The herb used this time was fresh rosemary, which was the better choice. I think the next time I do these, I’ll try roasting them in the oven.

4. Crock Pot Rice Pudding (I tweaked the recipe in the link, so the page may not load for a while). Mom wanted to borrow my extra crock pot since she hasn’t unpacked hers yet. I didn’t want to take it empty and since rice pudding is a favorite of hers, I decided to test the recipe again. This time I started with uncooked rice and tweaked the custard and cooking time a bit. This needs more tweaking. There are two issues - the rice layered into the bottom to almost form a crust of sorts (despite frequent stirring in the first 45 minutes of cooking) and then the custard cooked on top. Also the consistency of the custard was odd and it did not look pretty or even like you’d want to eat it. However, the flavor was exactly the same. So that’s the good thing. Mom said it was delicious, which is important. So I’m going to continue to work on this recipe until it’s perfected.

We also had the aforementioned bratwursts (sautéed in butter and onions and then poached in beer and then finished on the grill), baked beans, cole slaw, and homemade chocolate coconut milk ice cream (made by Marmie and Pop). The ice cream was very good - had the consistency of ice milk, but it was rich and chocolatey and each bite ended with a hint of coconut flavor. The downside is that it hardens to a solid block of chocolate ice after an extended period in the freezer. Uncle Bill brought a delicious apple pie, too. All in all, we ate well.

We watched A Capitol Fourth on the huge HDTV, all the while trying to keep Jesse’s interest in it to make it to the fireworks. Molly was battling sleep, which is an ongoing issue that I won’t go into in this post. Ultimately, he seemed underwhelmed with the fireworks once they came. He was way more interested in playing with the toys in Marmie’s boxes. We hit the hay as soon as the show was over.

Monday was a quiet day. We were planning to hit the road before lunch, but we ended up helping them with a problem with their cable and TV. Well, we didn’t solve the cable problem, Comcast will have to do that, but we did help them to move the big TV to the basement for their home theater and then to install the new, smaller TV for the living room. And then to tweak the entertainment center into it’s new, smaller size and into it’s final placement in the room.

The New Homestead is coming along nicely. I know it isn’t fast enough for Marmie and Pop, but the renovations to the kitchen, garage, and laundry are beautiful. Even with the boxes still all around, you can see that is going to be a lovely home when it’s all finally put together.

We enjoyed our short visit and brought home weary kids who went to bed without much argument, thankfully. Beau and I managed to watch a movie last night and I even managed to finish reading a book in dead tree form. Reviews of both to come.

Saturday, July 03, 2010

This is timely for our Independence Day holiday weekend.

“Subjects.”

That’s what Thomas Jefferson first wrote in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence to describe the people of the 13 colonies.

But in a moment when history took a sharp turn, Jefferson sought quite methodically to expunge the word, to wipe it out of existence and write over it. Many words were crossed out and replaced in the draft, but only one was obliterated.

Over the smudge, Jefferson then wrote the word “citizens.”

No longer subjects to the crown, the colonists became something different: a people whose allegiance was to one another, not to a faraway monarch.

The rest of the article is fascinating. Go forth…
[via OTB]

[via Thinkling Bill]

Thanks to Beau’s cousin, Karen, I have discovered Smitten Kitchen. Dear me. And I mean that in the best possible way you can say, “Dear me.”

This recipe is in our future, but of course, I’ll have to replace the bleu cheese with something else.

And then there’s this, too.

I’m attempting a pineapple upside-down cake with fresh pineapple this weekend - for Beau. He loves his fresh pineapple. And I’m going to make another batch of crock pot rice pudding, this time for my mother. I’ll do this batch with uncooked rice to see how that improved the recipe. I’ll post more, with pictures, after baking.

On that, I’m going to try to take better pictures of the recipes I present here. No more quick shots with the Blackberry. I’m going to attempt to take good shots of the food I make. If I can get good shots of my jewelry, I can get good shots of food.

Friday, July 02, 2010

I’ve been blogging for about 8 years now (the actual anniversary is in August). That’s just cuh-razy. You’d think at this point my readership would be through the roof. However, that is so not the case. I think I can count on one hand the number of regular readers, outside of my family, who still visit ye ole blogge. I can lay the blame squarely at the feet of Facebook. I spend way more time over there, post way more often, and comment on stuff there as opposed to the blogs that I visit. And yet, I still have a deep affection for my blog and the folks who do still read my drivel. There are several of you who have been with me going back to the beginning and you deserve better. So it’s time to make a change and a commitment.

I commit to you, dear readers, that I will post more meaty content here at Lintefiniel Musing. I promise more humor and news commentary. Maybe some politics - that’s a big maybe given my employer and the climate today. Definitely some spiritual stuff. Less complaining (this is something that I need to do in real life, as well). More TV, movies, books? This means I’ll need to watch more TV and movies than I am currently, but I can work on that. I can’t talk about work stuff anymore - frankly it’s way more boring than at the courthouse and I’m not at liberty to share most of what I see or do. And there are no colorful personalities in my immediate daily worklife. I know - sad. (Not really - I’m happy for no drama, believe me.) You tell me - what do you miss that I used to do here? What wouldn’t you miss if I stopped doing it here? [Added Later] More recipes? More jewelry/business talk? Help me help you.

And I commit to commenting more faithfully at the blogs that I visit, too. Because I do visit quite a few, but I’ve been too darned lazy to take the time to say something, anything, to my fellow bloggers.

Also, and this will take a lot more time and effort than my job and family may allow, but I think it’s time for a visual change as well. I’ve been thinking of switching to WordPress, but that’s a rather large job that may mean the loss of years’ worth of posts. In the meantime I hope to work on a new template, a freshening of the look here. A wider format, for sure. Techies, prepare yourselves for questions.

Let me know what you think…

SchoolHouse Rocks rocks.