Cooking style

Tagged for this by Adriane. Seems like a good Mother's Day blog topic. (Okay, I started it on Mother's Day, then got too sleepy to finish.)

1. What's your cooking style?

Home cooking with an experimental twist. I like to play with my recipes, adding and subtracting ingredients. I like to try to recreate meals we've had in restaurants. I learned the basics pretty well from my mom and my grandmothers: how to prepare meat in different ways, good gravy and white sauce, the right techniques for baking, preparing fresh vegetables, homemade salad dressing, etc. I've learned to spice things up, turn that white sauce to a bechamel or make red gravy, and to experiment with the basics I know. I'm a big fan of comfort food, and a lot of what I cook would fall into that category, but I love taking the mac and cheese with Velveeta that I grew up with and changing the flavor with different cheeses and spices. I love making soup, just throwing things into the post and seeing what comes out.

2. What inspires your kitchen?

My mom and my grandmas, the cooking shows I've been addicted to since I started watching Julia Child and the Galloping Gourmet when I was a kid, and the family I have the privilege to feed.

3. What is your favorite kitchen tool or element?

It's a tie:
My stockpot is used almost almost every day for either soup or pasta, but my KitchenAid stand mixer has changed my life. Seriously, baking is so much better with my monster mixer.

4. Best cooking advice or tip you ever received:

Taste while you cook. Taste before salting. Taste taste taste.

5. Biggest challenge in your kitchen:

Time. I just don't have enough time to spend in my kitchen.

6. Biggest indulgence:

Quality ingredients. I spend money on good meat, quality cheeses, good spices, excellent extra-virgin olive oil, farm-fresh eggs. etc. I keep all of the extras in my pantry that I might want: pesto, tapenade, artichoke hearts, olives, roasted red peppers, good vinegar, decent wine. There are very few times that I am willing to sacrifice flavor for price.

7. Dream tool or splurge:

A set of Le Creuset pans. I have one. I love it.

8. What are you cooking this week?

Not much. This is a weird week. The boys are gone for a few days. We have things going on Wednesday and Thursday nights and a garage sale Friday and Saturday. There will not be a lot of cooking. Last week I made portabella mushroom ravioli with a light bechamel sauce, salad and bread for Monday night. On Cinco de Mayo I made beef and chicken tacos. I made clam chowder Wednesday night. On Thursday night I made chicken cacciatore and garlic mashed potatoes. And Friday night I made smoked salmon caesar salads.

9. What cookbook has inspired you the most?

Hmmmmmm. I like to read lots of cookbooks and cooking magazines, but I don't really have any one that has inspired me. I have gotten the most use--by far--out of my Red Plaid Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook.

10. What's the most memorable meal you've cooked in this kitchen?

That's hard. There have been so many good meals with good friends and family in this house. I guess the winner will have to be the whole beef tenderloin that I made for Christmas when Nathan and Katie Fischer joined us in 2007. It is the first and only one I have made and it was perfect! We also had twice baked potatoes, salad, bread, and a really good Pinot Noir.

Consider yourself tagged, if you would like to be.

What I've been thinking

I haven't been posting much recently because I've had a lot on my mind and not much time. The topics I want to post about all need, and deserve, a thoughtful treatment. Unfortunately, right now all I can squeeze out is a quick post.

I just finished A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America by Shelby Steele. It needs to be the subject of a really good thorough post. I marked enough spots in the book to go back over that I'll almost be rereading the whole thing. That is a post to come.

An Issues, Etc. episode on tolerance (broadcast Friday April 17) that I listened to on Friday pinpointed a lot of the frustrations I've been feeling about the whole concept, and the seeming ease with which the left is able to redefine words. That's another post. Probably tomorrow.

The media keeps pushing the idea that the reason the Republican party is in trouble is because of a "move to the right." Huh? Is this the same Republican party that had an aisle-crossing moderate for a presidential nominee? The Republican Party is in trouble because it is in large part the Democrat Party Lite. The Republican Party is in trouble because for eight years we had a President who seemed incapable of articulating or defending his actions and positions and who helped to grow government and spend money like a drunken Democrat senator.

And I can't even start on the misrepresentation and vitriol that has surrounded the coverage of the tea parties and the attitude of the Democrats about them.

All of these things tie together. They all involve agendas and the power of words and being the one who defines them. They all speak to the tremendous influence of the press. They involve assumptions and political myths. Maybe over the next couple of days I'll manage some coherent posts and tie it all together.

Poetry

Pastor Horn, who, sadly, does not have a blog, posted about his favorite poem on Facebook today. That got me thinking about poetry and wondering where all of my poetry books are. I haven't had a chance to look yet, but I'm betting they're in my kids' rooms. That is not a bad thing.

What I did go looking for were my poems. I found part of them. They are dark! I'd forgotten how miserable I was most of the time in high school and my first years of college. Wow.

I have known lots of people who don't like poetry. I once thought that I didn't. I blame that on school, on English classes that have students ripping apart poems looking for meter or hidden meanings, instead of just reading them for appreciation first. (They do the same with Shakespeare, but that's another post.) I started reading poems to my kids right from the start. Mingled among the adorable rhyming board books, Mother Goose, Dr. Seuss, and Goodnight Moon, were A Child's Garden of Verses, The Tiger, Jabberwocky, and e.e. cummings.

Pastor Petersen has posted a wonderful poem he saw today at Writer's Almanac. Go read.

She's a grown up

Watching your kids grow up is one of the scariest, best, hardest, most wonderful things a parent gets to do. Each stage from sitting up and taking first steps, through driving lessons and teen-age angst, is a new experience, especially with your first child.

This is an eventful time around our house. Last Wednesday night the proud papa and I watched as our oldest was named outstanding senior by the IPFW history department and honored for being at the very tippy-top of this spring's graduating class. Two weeks from tomorrow she will graduate.

Today we got additional happy news. She has been hired by a local law firm to be a paralegal. A real, full-time, grow up job with benefits! She is excited about the job, which should be interesting and challenging.

We have another graduate this spring. Patrick is finishing high school and will be attending IPFW in the fall. He's not certain about a major yet, but is looking forward to getting started.

I have to admit that the homeschool mom part of me is feeling a certain amount of vindication. Oh yes, I realize that I still have two more to graduate, and Patrick isn't DONE with college yet, but I'm seeing that they have the ability to function as competent adults. I'm beginning to feel more confident that I haven't ruined their lives.

Tomorrow we will celebrate another big birthday. But that's another post.

Where have I been?

Wow. I haven't blogged for five days. I'm not sure how that happened, except that I have been busy, and, for at least the past few days the weather has been fantastic!

I got more goodies planted today. We now have two kinds of lettuce, spinach, mesclun, green onions, carrots, beets, turnips, kohlrabi, peas, and cilantro planted. I also planted some viola seeds and poppy seeds where our tree used to be.

My tan is coming back.

Sounds like we'll get rain tomorrow.

More food

For dinner tonight we had caramelized brussels sprouts. They were sooo good. Even if you don't like brussels sprouts, I think it's very likely that you would like these. I can't even remember who posted about them. RPW? Beth? And maybe it was on Facebook, which makes it amost impossible to find again.

I've decided that I need to figure out how to grow them, because it was one of the yummiest veggies I've ever had.

We also roasted a Seven Sons turkey and marveled again at how much better these turkeys are than what we buy in the store.

UPDATE: Thanks to a comment from Beth, I now have the link to the recipe on RPW's blog. Thanks, Beth!

Food

Tonight's dinner was so incredible. I was also so easy. I'm really trying to increase the amount of veggies that we eat. We do great in the summer, but sometimes during the colder months I have trouble. We always eat some, but probably not as many as we could.

I have roasted veggies at times in the past, but have been doing it much more frequently. Tonight I made two 11x14 pans of roasted veggies. I think we could have eaten twice as many! I just used what was in the refrigerator: sweet potatoes, onions, garlic, cabbage, carrots, and squash. It was awesome.

Tomorrow night I'm going to try caramelizing some brussels sprouts.

Speaking of food. Pioneer Woman has a quiche recipe that looks really good. Can't wait to try it.

Blocked

Been having a bit of trouble feeling like writing anything. I think it's partly too much exposure to the nastiness that has been bubbling up from certain parts of the blogosphere.

But if you want to read an excellent blog post, my friend RPW has written a doozy.

Or you can go to my book blog and read my lazy meme post.

Domestic duties

This is a day to get things done at home. I'm going to work on getting the downstairs cleaned. I'm going to plant the first seeds: spinach, lettuce, peas, beets, green onions, and turnips. Bethany needs a resume and cover letter, so I am helping her with those.

Later this afternoon I'm going to the store to get the fixings for Mexican food and margaritas for tonight when a couple of friends and their kids are coming over for dinner and games.

I'm hoping that next week we have the sun and the warmth to allow me to get the windows and screens clean. That would really brighten things up in here.

Another view on the Tea Parties

Fellow homeschooler Susan, has a post about her experience with an Illinois Tea Party.

Why tea party?

I hadn't been paying much attention to the left's characterization of the Tea Party movement until today. When I figured out that I wasn't going to be able to get to Indianapolis for today's event, I decided that I would follow the parties on the news and Twitter.

The left is in a tizzy. The malice and nastiness is amazing. They are either purposely misrepresenting the Tea Parties or have managed to maintain their ignorance about what they are about. They have made up conspiracy stories about the origin, even though many of us who are active online at TCOT and Smart Girl Politics and on Twitter watched the idea grow and spread organically.

They are not anti-Obama. There may be some people who are stridently anti-Obama in attendance, but that isn't the purpose. I would venture a guess that you would find as much disgust with Republican politicians and congressional Democrats among the protesters as with Obama. When I go to our local tea party on Saturday, one of our signs will be questioning our Republican congressman and his vote for the bailout.

They aren't simplistically anti-tax. The vast majority of the people attending the Tea Parties have been paying taxes for years and expect to need to pay taxes to fund the government. There is probably a wide variation among those in attendance over what they believe is legitimate government spending. They aren't about, as one pundit said, the taxes on the wealthy going up 3%.

What they are about is spending. They are about bailouts, whether for Wall Street, GM, or the neighbor down the street who refinanced, bought that big screen, and now can't afford his mortgage and owes more than his house is worth. They are about unbridled spending under the guise of rescuing the economy, and passing an ever-growing debt on to our children. They are about politicians passing spending bills when they don't know what's in them.

They are about concerns that our constitution is being shunted aside by a federal government that insists that states and companies take funds they don't want and that seems almost daily to stretch the limits of its power. They are about the printing of more money, more foreign ownership of our debt, and the devaluation of our currency and inflation that many economists believe is coming.

Not too much

That's what's on my mind tonight. I finished my taxes, finally.

It's cold and rainy, and I'm really ready for the sunshine.

Tomorrow the boys and I are picking up my mom and heading to Indy for the Tea Party.

Still having fun with Polyvore.

Need to do some serious housecleaning.

Easter Monday

The kids and I went to church this morning. I really appreciate the Easter Monday service. It helps with the let down after the richness of Holy Week and Easter.

Back now to real life. I need to finish my taxes, clean my house, and do some major organizing.

Ladies in hats

I hope this is the beginning of a tradition at Redeemer. A pretty good chunk of the ladies in the congregation wore hats today. I think there are a few more who will when we do it again. Have I mentioned recently how much I love these ladies, and the rest of my church family?

The service was of course, lovely. The music was glorious! The sermon was excellent. All in all a wonderful Easter.

Easter

  1. I know that my Redeemer lives;
       What comfort this sweet sentence gives!
       He lives, He lives, who once was dead;
       He lives, my ever-living Head.
      
       2. He lives triumphant from the grave,
       He lives eternally to save,
       He lives all-glorious in the sky,
       He lives exalted there on high.
      
       3. He lives to bless me with His love,
       He lives to plead for me above.
       He lives my hungry soul to feed,
       He lives to help in time of need.
      
       4. He lives to grant me rich supply,
       He lives to guide me with His eye,
       He lives to comfort me when faint,
       He lives to hear my soul's complaint.
      
       5. He lives to silence all my fears,
       He lives to wipe away my tears
       He lives to calm my troubled heart,
       He lives all blessings to impart.
      
       6. He lives, my kind, wise, heavenly Friend,
       He lives and loves me to the end;
       He lives, and while He lives, I'll sing;
       He lives, my Prophet, Priest, and King.
      
       7. He lives and grants me daily breath;
       He lives, and I shall conquer death:
       He lives my mansion to prepare;
       He Iives to bring me safely there.
      
       8. He lives, all glory to His name!
       He lives, my Jesus, still the same.
       Oh, the sweet joy this sentence gives,
       "I know that my Redeemer lives!"
      
       

       Notes:
       Hymn #200 from _The Lutheran Hymnal_
       Text: Job 19:25-27
       Author: Samuel Medley, 1775, ab.
       Composer: John Hatton, 1793
       Tune: "Duke Street"

Easter Vigil

Come, You Faithful, Raise the Strain
By: John of Damascus

Come, you faithful, raise the strain
Of triumphant gladness!
God has brought his Israel
Into joy from sadness,
Loosed from Pharaoh’s bitter yoke
Jacob’s sons and daughters,
Led them with unmoistened foot
Through the Red Sea waters.

This the spring of souls today:
Christ has burst his prison
And from three days’ sleep in death
As a sun has risen;
All the winter of our sins,
Long and dark, is flying
From his light, to whom is given
Laud and praise undying.

Now the queen of seasons, bright
With the day of splendor,
With the royal feast of feasts
Comes its joy to render;
Comes to gladden faithful hearts
Which with true affection
Welcome in unwearied strain
Jesus’ resurrection!

For today among his own
Christ appeared, bestowing
His deep peace, which evermore
Passes human knowing.
Neither could the gates of death
Nor the tomb’s dark portal
Nor the watchers nor the seal
Hold him as a mortal.

Alleluia! Now we cry
To our King immortal,
Who, triumphant, burst the bars
Of the tomb’s dark portal
Come, you faithful, raise the strain
Of triumphant gladness!
God has brought his Israel
Into joy from sadness!

Hymn # 141 from Lutheran Worship
Author: Johann Horn
Tune: Gaudeamus Pariter
1^st Published in: 1859

Holy Saturday

1. Sing; my tongue, the glorious battle,
 sing the ending of the fray;
 now above the cross, the trophy,
 sound the loud triumphant lay:
 tell how Christ, the world's Redeemer,
 as a victim won the day.

2. Tell how, when at length the fullness
 of th' appointed time was come,
 Christ, the Word, was born of woman,
 left for us his heavenly home;
 showed us human life made perfect,
 shone as light amid the gloom.

3. Thus, with thirty years accomplished,
 went he forth from Nazareth,
 destined, dedicated, willing,
 wrought his work, and met his death.
 Like a lamb he humbly yielded
 on the cross his dying breath.

4. Faithful cross, thou sign of triumph,
 now for us the noblest tree,
 none in foliage, none in blossom,
 none in fruit thy peer may be;
 symbol of the world's redemption,
 for the weight that hung on thee!

5. Unto God be praise and glory:
 to the Father and the Son,
 to th' eternal Spirit honor
 now and evermore be done;
 praise and glory in the highest,
 while unending ages run.

Sing, My Tongue

Text: Venantius Honorius Fortunatus

---

Good Friday

"O Sacred Head, Now Wounded"
by Paul Gerhardt, 1607-1676

1. O sacred Head, now wounded,
With grief and shame weighed down,
Now scornfully surrounded
With thorns, Thine only crown.
O sacred Head, what glory,
What bliss, till now was Thine!
Yet, though despised and gory,
I joy to call Thee mine.

2. Men mock and taunt and jeer Thee,
Thou noble countenance,
Though mighty worlds shall fear Thee
And flee before Thy glance.
How art thou pale with anguish,
With sore abuse and scorn!
How doth Thy visage languish
That once was bright as morn!

3. Now from Thy cheeks has vanished
Their color, once so fair;
From Thy red lips is banished
The splendor that was there.
Grim Death, with cruel rigor,
Hath robbed Thee of Thy life;
Thus Thou has lost Thy vigor,
Thy strength, in this sad strife.

4. My burden in Thy Passion,
Lord, Thou hast borne for me,
For it was my transgression
Which brought this woe on thee.
I cast me down before Thee,
Wrath were my rightful lot;
Have mercy, I implore Thee;
Redeemer, spurn me not!

5. My Shepherd, now receive me;
My Guardian, own me Thine.
Great blessings Thou didst give me,
O Source of gifts divine!
Thy lips have often fed me
With words of truth and love,
Thy Spirit oft hath led me
To heavenly joys above.

6. Here I will stand beside Thee,
From Thee I will not part;
O Savior, do not chide me!
When breaks Thy loving heart,
When soul and body languish
In death's cold, cruel grasp,
Then, in Thy deepest anguish,
Thee in mine arms I'll clasp.

7. The joy can ne'er be spoken,
Above all joys beside,
When in Thy body broken
I thus with safety hide.
O Lord of life, desiring
Thy glory now to see,
Beside Thy cross expiring,
I'd breathe my soul to Thee.

8. What language shall I borrow
To thank Thee, dearest Friend,
For this, Thy dying sorrow,
Thy pity without end?
Oh, make me thine forever!
And should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never,
Outlive my love for Thee.

9. My Savior, be Thou near me
When death is at my door;
Then let Thy presence cheer me,
Forsake me nevermore!
When soul and body languish,
Oh, leave me not alone,
But take away mine anguish
By virtue of Thine own!

10. Be Thou my Consolation,
My Shield when I must die;
Remind me of Thy Passion
When my last hour draws nigh.
Mine eyes shall then behold Thee,
Upon Thy cross shall dwell,
My heart by faith enfold Thee.
Who dieth thus dies well!

The Lutheran Hymnal
Hymn #172
Text: Is. 50: 6
Author: Paul Gerhardt
Based on the Latin poem "Salve caput cruentatum"
By Bernard of Clairvaux, 1153, asc.
Translated by: composite
Titled: O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden
Composer: Hans L. Hassier, 1601
Tune: Herzlich tut mich

Uncle Sam, you owe me

As of this morning Uncle Sam owes me 27 hours of my life that I will never get to use for something worthwhile. And my taxes still aren't finished.

That's just this year. These hours don't even count the time I spent last month going through old paperwork determining what could go and what had to stay.

This doesn't count the time I have to spend every day documenting my mileage. Or moving around mounds of paper that might possibly have some tax significance next year.

Our tax system stinks. (If you know me well, you know the word that I wanted to use there.) We need the Fair Tax, a flat tax, or some other simple tax plan. I also wish that we had a system that made people pay their taxes instead of having them withheld. That might wake some people up to how much the government is really taking out of our pockets.

One of those things

...that I really didn't need to know about.

My friend Polly mentioned Polyvore on Facebook last night.

Oh. Oh my. Oh me oh my. I have lost some time there today.

It is like scrapbooking with clothes. Mixing and matching, playing with colors and styles; it's like having the run of some awesome closet. If you loved dressing Barbies or paper dolls, it could be dangerous.


Just for fun by IndianaJane featuring Jessica Kagan Cushman jewelry

Attempted shopping, part three

Alternately titled, success.

Yes, I did find something to wear for Easter. I was going to head back to Von Maur and try on a scary-expensive dress and jacket, but decided first to try Burlington Coat Factory. I had never been in there, but a friend suggested it, so I went.

First, I was surprised at how nice it was. I was expecting the chaotic warehouse shopping experience, which I hate, but it was very well-organized and pleasant inside. The first dress I saw was $29.99. It was one of the two dresses that I had tried on at Von Maur. Same fabric. Same brand. The price at Von Maur was $69. Whoa!

I wasn't seeing anything, until I walked all the way past the clearance stuff to the edge of the department. I saw a couple of racks of ladies suits and two-piece dresses. Jackpot! I found a warm cream two piece dress that looks decent and cost a fifth of what I was willing to spend. I need to get some shoes, but that shouldn't be hard.

It also should look good with the hat that I fell in love with.

Attempted shopping, part two

Yesterday I tried again. This time I went to Jefferson Pointe.

I did see several things at Von Maur that were very pretty, unfortunately they were constructed in such a way that they were more revealing than my undergarments. Not good. I did find a dress for my favorite life-size Barbie, who really doesn't need a new dress, but I couldn't resist.

I enjoyed walking around JP in the gorgeous sunshine. I visited a few other stores, including my beloved Chico's, even though I knew that they wouldn't have what I was looking for this time. I did find a really pretty shirt, though.

I decided that I would visit Stein Mart on my way home. I got to my car and began searching for my keys. And searching. And searching. Looked in the car window. Couldn't see the keys anywhere.

Did I stick them in my pocket instead of my purse when I got out of the car? Did I drop them when I was putting them in my purse? Did I drop them when I was paying at one of the stores? I retraced my steps, asked at each of the stores. No luck.

Called Bethany to come get me, but then I realized that that would do no good, because I have the only key to that car. So I called a locksmith who could make me a new key after we got my door open if the key wasn't in there. It took about 45 minutes for him to get there, but I had Bethany most of the time, so it went pretty quickly.

He popped open the door and I got in and started looking. My keys were under my book bag on the passenger seat. I still have NO idea how they got there.

I ended up blowing most of the afternoon, but I did learn some lessons:
--Do not talk on the phone to your mother and your almost-five-year-old niece while getting out of the car.
--No matter how many paranoid emails you get about not locking the car with the key fob because of people waiting in parking lots to steal the signal and break into your car, use the key fob. I am--obviously--in far greater danger of locking the keys in the car.
--When they doctor has just told you to avoid citrus fruits, don't drink lemonade, no matter how thirsty you think you are and how good it looks.

Attempted shopping

Bethany and I attempted to shop today between other commitments. I was looking for something to wear for Easter, a dress or a pretty skirt. Unfortunately, we had no luck. I didn't even find anything that I was interested enough in to look at the price tag!

The prints were ugly, the colors were garish and the fabrics were cheap.

Why, oh why, is it so hard to find pretty clothes?

It shouldn't have to be stated

But unfortunately, in this climate, it seems sadly necessary.

Angie Harmon says, "I'm not a racist because I disagree with Obama."

The Racist Card is becoming the new tool for attempting to stifle dissent. Racism is evil, and so is accusing people of it because they don't agree with you. Being called a racist is difficult to defend against--because you're stuck trying to prove a negative-- but it can't be accepted in silence.

Back from scrapping

I had a great time at the scrapbooking retreat. I completed over 50 pages and had a nice visit with my mom and my friend Lori. I also enjoyed getting to know another friends from church better.

This is going to be a whirlwind week. Things just keep piling on to my schedule.

Words

Been thinking a lot lately about words and language and the internet. I've always been a word buff and love learning new words. I like to use precisely the right word when possible. (Sometimes, as I get older, they seem to go missing.) Nuances, subtle shades of meaning are important.

It has always irritated me when people say,"Communicating on the internet is hard," or "It's too easy for things to be taken the wrong way." I've had people misbehave on my email lists for years and then blame those who took offense for not understanding them properly.

But think about it: Is communicating in writing on the internet any different than communicating in writing on paper? I don't think so. What is different is the amount of thought that is put into it. People will say that spelling and grammar don't matter in email, but those conventions exist for a reason. They make communication clearer and easier. People will write things in an email that they would never commit to paper. They will send an email un-proofread because it's just email.

Sometimes, too, I think that people do not communicate well on the internet because they don't read well. They skim. And all too often, between the sloppiness of the writers and the lack of skill of the readers, the meaning gets muddled.

Then, too, I have seen people write things on the internet or in email and then express surprise when they draw an unfavorable reaction. They almost always say the same thing, that the offense is in the mind of the reader. But in reality, the offense is in their words. People seem, for whatever reason, to more readily deny the clear meaning of their words online than in print.
Maybe it is because much of online writing is done in haste. I, personally, have a read-three-times-rule for any writing that is prompted by emotion. After I write it I make myself go back at least three times and read it, with at least thirty minutes of thinking about something else in between. This has saved me from many emails and blog posts that were better not shared!

For this communication thing to work, online or off, people need to understand what words mean, use them properly and carefully, and then own them. If we want to communicate more effectively online, reading effectively written items--good books, old letters, even well-written blogs--can be a tremendous help. And we should always, always give things a second read--I usually do this aloud--just to make sure that we are clear in what we are saying.

Questions

Why is it taking me so long to get my photos organized for the scrapbooking retreat?

Why can't I get Def Leppard on my iPod?

Why the big stink about pink?

What should I make for dinner tomorrow night?

Are the rest of us going to catch Patchy's yucky cough/fever/sore throat?

Will I sleep all night tonight?

Is my house ever going to be clean?

Obama's teleprompter

If you aren't hearing about Obama's teleprompter, you probably aren't paying attention. Or maybe you only watch MSNBC and read Kos. But the discussion is everywhere, serious and otherwise, about this president's dependence on his teleprompter.

We saw in the campaign that he had a little trouble speaking off the cuff. Last night he appeared on Jay Leno's show--which is another topic--and showed once again that he REALLY needs his 'prompter.

So, for your reading pleasure, Obama's teleprompter. Aka, TOTUS. And his book.

Likely to offend

I'm going to warn you right off the bat that if you are a big fan, or defender, of institutional schooling you might want to skip this post. Or, better yet, you need to read it, be offended, and then read the book.

I've been reading Weapons of Mass Instruction by former New York State Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto. His book Dumbing Us Down helped shore up my courage when we started homeschooling, by aiding me in articulating some of the things that bothered me about the way that we school children. This book is reminding me again, and giving me reasons for much of what I see going on around me.

Gatto's books take a good hard look at the dichotomy between what we suppose that schools are for--to produce an educated citizenry--and what they were really designed to do, and do well. That is, to provide a trained, more homogenized workforce that does not question that the experts know best and that recognizes that some animals are more equal than others.

This is why in spite of 12-13 years of mandated schooling, with many of us adding a year or two on the front end, and more on the back end, we get statistics like this one:

"Only 31% of college educated Americans can fully comprehend a newspaper story, down from 40% a decade ago." (National Commission on the Future of Higher Education, 2006)

Statistics like this explain why, when I'm discussing the news or world events with people, or am involved in an online discussion, I ask myself again and again, "Can't these people READ?" Unfortunately, that answer is likely to be no, since reading proficiency is even lower among those who are not college grads.

For years we have seen study after study that show that our schools don't do what we think they should. The antidote suggested is always more money and more time. What we generally don't recognize is that schools are doing exactly what they were designed to do.

At some deeper level, I think many people know this. It is the reason why the main question homeschoolers get is, "What about socialization?" People worry that our children won't know how to wait in lines and get up to an alarm. Homeschoolers are criticized when their children don't fit in seamleesly with a group of others their age. Pepople don't worry that our children won't be able to read, write, and think. They worry that they'll make other people uncomfortable by being different.

Consider this, "We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks." This is Woodrow Wilson, speaking to businessmen about the purpose of mandatory public education. Quotes like this and ideas like this are not the exception in the shaping of our schools. They are the norm. For an even more in-depth look, Gatto's Underground History of American Education is available online.

Reading Gatto's books makes me realize what a subversive activity homeschooling is. It helps me to understand why, since we began this adventure 13 years ago, my outlook on so many things has changed. I question more. And I have taught my kids to do the same.

There will be more posts stemming from this book in coming days. It bears many markings and dog-earred pages, each of them a potential post. Read the book. Even if you're sure you disagree.

You've seen this one before

Once again I am trying to get a modicum of control over my life. Yes, again.

I spent some hours Saturday--as I sat on the couch with my bum ankle and newly-twisted knee propped up and iced--berating myself for my lack of accomplishment. I haven't been to the Y in months. My house is pretty much of a wreck. I haven't baked since Christmas, aside from one delightful triple batch of biscuits. I am making almost no contribution to the family finances, even though a modicum of effort would add a significant amount to my income. I really want to sell my house, but there is a huge amount that needs to be done in order to accomplish that.

As I stewed, I remembered a suggestion for mothers who get to the end of the day and feel like the haven't accomplished anything. Make a list of what you was accomplish and then cross items off. So I went back a week to last Saturday and wrote down everything that I had done. Suddenly, I didn't look like such a slacker. There was work done on the church nursery and books. There was an out-of-town trip and shopping. There were meetings. There was laundry and cleaning. There was cooking for about 50 people outside our family across three different occasions. Then there was a bum-leg day on Friday, when I at least got photos uploaded and ordered from Snapfish.

I felt a bit better. Maybe I'm not a slacker. But I still have a problem. I have to find a way to fit in the things that I want and need to do.

Another book list

This is a list of books that the College Board says that college-bound high school students should read. After being in honors English classes in high school and minoring in English in college, followed by homeschooling and reading tons for the past 13 years, this list makes me feel slightly inadequate.

Those in red are those that I've read. I am italicizing those that I'd like to read.

Beowulf
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
A Death in the Family by James Agee
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Go Tell It on the Mountain, by James Baldwin
Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett
The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer
The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
Inferno by Dante
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Selected Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Tess of the d’Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The Iliad by Homer
The Odyssey by Homer
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
Beloved by Toni Morrison
A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill
Animal Farm, by George Orwell
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Selected Tales by Edgar Allen Poe
Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
Call it Sleep by Henry Roth
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Antigone by Sophocles
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (read 1/2)
Vanity Fair by William Thackeray
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Candide by Voltaire
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
Collected Stories by Eudora Welty
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Native Son by Richard Wright

I've read 49 of the 101. Of those I really only think about 25 are important to read. It seems to me that many of these are best read later, and for pleasure. I am so glad that I did not first encounter Pride and Prejudice as a book to be dissected in class.

I also think that one of the benefits of homeschooling--especially the way we do it--is that my kids have encountered literature as they were ready for it and as it suited their mood and taste. Bethany commented, on hearing this list, "No wonder so many kids think they don't like literature."

We also found the list of Poetry and Cultural and Historical Texts to be dismal. "You should read these three poems by this poet." How about picking up a book of poems and reading?

A few pictures, just because

In the midst of cleaning, organizing, and trying to get ready for the next big scrapbooking retreat, I thought I'd share some pictures.

Shopping

Went shopping today with my mom and Bethany. I hadn't been shopping for months, unless it was to look for something particular and necessary for some member of the family. I've always enjoyed shopping as recreation--especially with my mom --but today I just wasn't into it.

Nothing looked like anything that I wanted. It all seemed too expensive. The music in all the stores was too loud. The only store I really enjoyed was Borders. And I had a gift card, which made it that much better!

I don't know if this is a momentary blip, or a sign of some deeper change. But me not enjoying shopping is significant enough to merit comment.

The end of the story

Maybe I really didn't run my van out of gas. We aren't sure. It may have been the beginning of the fuel pump going out. That repair was $900.

The Buick didn't cost anything to fix. Colin looked at it and discovered that when the car had some maintenance work done on Tuesday, the air filter hadn't been properly replaced. It caused sensors to trip, which in turn shut off the engine.

I got through the silent auction last night. Now I'm ready to spend some time working on the house.

Act II

I shared yesterday's van trial last night. Here's an update.

The van is not running. It is in a parking lot, sitting, waiting for Colin to go look at it and see if he can tell more than I can about why it's not running. Needless to say, since it is in a parking lot, I was stranded for a time today.

But WAIT! That's not all!

My car is not running either. It is also in a parking lot. Fortunately, it is in the church parking lot, where it died this afternoon. It started acting up while I was our running around trying to gather silent auction items, and I was fervently praying that it just get me to church. It did. So at least I got to enjoy some yummy soup and a church service, but the car is not starting. So Colin's going to go look at it tomorrow, too.

We are wondering about the gas--from the same station--that we put in both cars, which were both empty or very nearly so. Bethany filled her nearly empty car at the same station minutes after I did, so let's see if hers is next.

Never a dull moment

I had a lot that I wanted to get done today. I've been doing battle with a sore throat for the past couple of days, and it has slowed me down a bit, so I was hoping to catch up. The morning was already committed, so I planned to try to get some running around for the silent auction done this afternoon.

I headed out, deciding at the last minute to wear my wool jacket over the top I had on with my jeans. That turned out to be an extremely good decision.

I have been driving one of our minivans, because the fan in my car isn't working and I'm waiting for Colin to look at it. Today I was driving the Silhouette, which is right at 190,000 miles, and has a few quirks. The gas gauge hasn't worked for a while, but I just use the trip odometer to keep track of how much gas I have.

Apparently I lost track.

As I was pulling up to a stop sign--on my way into Jefferson Pointe, for those of you familiar with Fort Wayne--the van started running roughly. When I accelerated to pull away, the van died. In the middle of the intersection. My initial assumption was that the van was dead; I didn't even consider that I might have run out of gas.

So I sat there, flashers on, door open, trying to figure out what to do. I wanted to get it out of the way, but obviously couldn't do it alone. I managed to push myself backward with my foot so that I was at least back out of the intersection. A few people honked at me, before they figured out that I couldn't move. Most just ignored me. Finally a lady stopped to see if I needed help and offered to push. As soon as she stopped, three more people did, and I was shortly pushed into the JP parking lot.

I started thinking, and remembered that Monday I had only put in $10 worth of gas because of problems with the pump. Duh! So I walked across the four lane road and the Wal-mart parking lot and bought a gas can. Then back ascross the parking lot to the gas station for a gallon of gas. Then back to the car.

I could NOT figure out the gas can. After about ten minutes of messing with it--and after getting gas on my hands--I finally worked out the secret, and got it to work.

Got into the van. Prayed that the gas was the problem. Turned the key. It started and died. Tried again. Started and died. Again. Waited a few minutes. Again. This time after I started I really stepped on the gas. And it kept running.

Needless to say, I drove straight to the gas station and filled it all the way up.

At this point, I had lost over an hour. I had been in the wind and my hair was flat. I was sweaty from walking. I smelled like gas. I was no longer in the frame of mind to go beg for donations. So I went home. Afternoon wasted.

Now the good things about the afternoon. I wore the jacket. The van died less than a block from a gas station--with a nearby store that had gas cans--where it could be pushed into a parking lot, not by the marsh, or out by our house, or on the highway, all of which could have easily been the location. There were several people willing to stop and help a stranger. It was a beautiful sunny day for a walk. All in all, a fairly painless reminder NOT to forget how much gas I put into the car.

I should be in bed

...but I'm not. I don't know why.

I have to be up and about in the morning. The boys all have haircuts. I have places to be all day. I've had a sore throat all day. A good night's rest would be an excellent idea.

But I sit here still, looking for conversations on Twitter, reading emails, catching up on Facebook statuses, and reading blogs.

Maybe it's akin to me never wanting to leave a party while it's still going. I don't want to turn off the computer until every last person I know has one to bed. Of course, knowing people on several continents makes that difficult.

I suppose I'll just have to rein in my FOMS, and head to bed.

Reading, funerals, & headaches

Really, those things have nothing to do with each other, except they all are reasons that I haven't blogged in a few days.

I retreated into books this weekend after having a couple of particularly bad internet experiences. First, on Friday night, while searching for old friends I found out something about one that I wish I didn't know. Then I had the experience of being present in a chat room where someone made a racist remark. I left immediately, un-followed the person on Twitter, and told her why, but I still felt dirty, simply from having been present.

Saturday we had a funeral at Redeemer for the sister of several women who are very dear to me, and we ended up spending a good chunk of the day at church. Saturday night my headache made its return , and by Sunday afternoon it left me with only one option: sleep. It has been a long time since I had a headache that put me to bed, but yesterday's did.

One upside of having a funeral, is that we get a great sermon. As soon as Pastor Petersen has it posted, I'll link to it. In the meantime, if you are interested you can listen to the audio from the Redeemer Free Conference featuring Rev. Dr. Rick Stuckwisch and and Rev. Dr. Burnell Eckardt.

Reading

Since I joined several reading challenges for this year, I am a lot more aware of what other people are reading and it has made me curious about why people read and why they read what they read.

I read because I can't not read. I read whatever is in my line of vision: boxes, pamphlets, signs, magazines, newspapers, bumper stickers, Twitter feeds, etc. When I get a chance I read books, and compared to most people I read a lot of books.

The thing that I don't understand is the people who read tons of books, two, three, four times as many as I read, but they read romances. They read nothing other than what I call junk books. Really, I have nothing against junk books. Sometimes that's all my brain can take, but I try not to over do it. There are so many excellent books to read that it seems a shame to waste the time on the print equivalent of potato chips.

So, if you are a reader, what do you read? How do you decide what to read?

I have to be in the right mood for a particular book. Right now I'm in the middle of a major non-fiction streak, but I can feel it waning and I'm in the middle of a couple of books that may be set aside for a while so I can scratch the next mental itch. This makes reading library books difficult. What I'm in the mood for on Monday, may look totally uninteresting by Friday. Maybe this is part of my ADD? Does anyone else do this?

A few good reads

Thought I'd share a couple of good articles that I've read today. Kind of a mini carnival of common sense.

First, President Obama's constant misrepresentation of those who disagree with him is getting old. Already. Read Obama's Straw Men.

The Black Sphere posts Obama's War on Achievement. While you're at his blog read the last several postings. He's good.

Why does the stock market continue to drop?

Is this what we need from our president right now?

And if you're one of the envious out there who just wants those rich people to suffer, take a look at this from the WSJ. If you think raising taxes only on those who make over $250,000/year will pay for Obama's recreation of America...well, I don't even know what to say to you.

Pancakes tomorrow!

Don't forget to go get your free short stack of pancakes at IHOP tomorrow!

Here in Fort Wayne, when you make donations they will benefit A Hope Center.

Tee-hee, indeed

My daughter cracks. Me. Up.

A good day

Today was a good day, even though I did almost nothing productive. Okay, yeah, I scrapbooked eight pages and wrote a book review for one of my reading challenges. Productive, I suppose, but not the most practical way to spend a Saturday.

After I came home from a hard day of scrappin', the boys made dinner and cleaned up the kitchen.
Ah, yes. Life is good.

Check that off thelist

I have had one item on my to-do list that I have avoided mentioning because I have been feeling really guilty that it wasn't done. Today I crossed it off.

Patrick has a transcript and has applied to college.

For me, this is the hardest part of homeschooling. If we used a school-in-a-box curriculum it would be easy. If what we do from day to day looked more like traditional school, this would not be such an ordeal. But what we do looks nothing like school, so I have to take my kids' lives and their learning and quantify it. It's hard. I want to be accurate, neither overstating nor understating what the kids have learned.

But it's done. Although I would like to have had it done sooner, there really was no hurry. Patrick will be attending IPFW, and they take applications into the summer. We aren't filling out the Financial Aid Form, because we wouldn't qualify, so that was not a consideration. He will be living at home, so we don't need to worry about housing.

Now I just need to worry about paying for it.

And Jonathan is next.

ADD life

I'm in one of my extreme ADD phases right now. I always have to struggle a bit with focus, but at times--like now--it's really bad.

I have too many interests. I enjoy too many things. And of course, I have things I have to do. Right now, on top of the normal cooking, cleaning, etc., I have taxes to do. (Fair Tax, anyone?) The Bach Collegium Silent Auction is in two weeks and I am really struggling to get donations. I still haven't closed out last year's books at church.

I need to upload photos, go through photos on the computer, and place a snapfish order. I need to get my scrapbooking stuff consolidated into my office closet. I need to finish recovering my dining room chairs and painting my kitchen cupboards. I want to get the house ready to sell.

I still haven't gotten around to baking bread or sewing the aprons that I've had fabric and patterns for for over a year. I have 15 library books checked out and two months worth of magazines to read. I need to sew the buttons back onto my London Fog coat. (They weren't sewn on, sew they've all popped off. I have a pile of stuff to eBay.

Help.

Yummy mushroom chicken

Tonight's dinner was wonderful. I tried to recreate the flavor of a chicken dish that we had from On My Thyme. What I came up with was close.

First, I rubbed the bottom of a 9X13 stone baking dish with olive oil. I rolled four lightly-salted large boneless, skinless chicken breasts in Italian bread crumbs and laid them in the pan. Melted two tablespoons of butter and drizzled over the chicken. Topped the chicken with 16 oz. of sliced fresh mushrooms. Poured 1 cup chicken broth and 1/4 cup sherry over the mushrooms. I laid slices of monterey jack cheese over the top. I think that when we had the dish from OMT, it was provolone, but Jack was what I had.

Baked it at 350 for about 45 minutes. The time was a guess and would vary with the thickness of the chicken breasts.

I served it with brown rice, olive bread, and a salad.

It was simple and absolutely delicious. I think that next time I would use a little more broth and sherry, because the pan juice was soooo good with the rice and the bread. We were scraping the pan trying to get every little bit.

I should never have gone to etsy

While browsing all of the lovely, quirky, adorable, or baffling hand-crafted items on etsy, I made a dangerous discovery. My favorite designer of scrapbooking paper also designs fabric.

Oh. My. Goodness.

Hold me back.

Blog fog

As anyone who reads my blog often can see, I've been a bit blocked.

I've had a hard time writing about much of anything. I've been in a funk because of what is going on politically. I'm feeling overwhelmed by all of the work I have to do on my house if I want to sell it. I'm feeling like I should be doing better at contributing to our household income. I haven't been cooking enough. My brain has felt cloudy. I just haven't felt like writing.

But things are turning around. I'm planning my garden. I've sold several things on eBay, which is two plusses: a plus in the decluttering column and a plus in the income column. I cooked dinner tonight and have dinners planned for the rest of this week. I have a week without a lot of outside commitments, so I should be able to make some progress.

I made myself a promise that I am going to blog every day, to keep the fog at bay.

Another book list

This is another list of books that is going around on Facebook. The introduction states, "apparently the BBC reckons most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here." Some of the list seems to come from the BBC's Big Read list of 100 favorite books in Britain, although not completely and not in entirely the same order.

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X +
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X +
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
Running total: 9

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare X
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier X
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger X
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
Running total: 15

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens *
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy *
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky X
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X
Running total:21

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy*
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (some)
34 Emma - Jane Austen X
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen X
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini X
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X
Running total: 27

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X+
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez *
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving X+
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins*
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X+
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood X
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
Running total: 33

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens *
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Running total: 35

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas *
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding X
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville X
Running total: 38

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson *
75 Ulysses - James Joyce X
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome X
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray X+
80 Possession - AS Byatt
Running total: 44

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert X
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X+
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle some
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
Running total: 48

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad X
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams X
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo *

How many have you read? 53, with a couple of "somes" to collections of books. I've also started several of the books: Possession, The Lovely Bones, Lolita, but couldn't get into them.

If anyone feels like doing this one your blog--or on Facebook--consider yourself tagged.

Yum

I've been feeling a bit stuck in a rut with my cooking for the past few weeks. I've been really busy and I spent a couple of weeks not feeling the best. I just seem to have gotten out of the groove.

Tonight I decided to do something about it. I spent some time with The Pioneer Woman. I browsed through issues of Saveur, Bon Appetit, and Cook's. I'm hoping to manage some time to cook tomorrow, but, realistically, I probably won't have much time for several days. But when I do, I'm ready to go.

I have a couple of recipes that I am dying to try now: French Onion Soup, which Pioneer Woman makes look so easy, and chicken breasts stuffed with artichoke hearts, roasted red pepper and fontina. I also saw a chicken tikka masala that looks doable, and--because it's an America's Test Kitchens recipe--should be good. And then there's the Banoffee Pie recipe that I saw tonight. Yum.

You're no Lincoln

If you could use a little historically-related levity, check out the Obamasburg Address.

HT: Spunky

Got this picture from Twitter. Fell in love.

Books and more books

Saw this on Facebook, but decided to do it on my blog instead. I'm not sure where the list came from, but it's books, so I'll go for it.

X means I read it.
S means I started it.
A number means the number I've read in the series.

[X]Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
[X]The Martian Chronicles (Ray Bradbury)
[X]Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
[X]Ender's Shadow (Orson Scott Card)
[]House of Leaves (Mark Z. Danielewski)
[3]The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien)
[S]The Hobbit (Tolkien)
[S]The Silmarillion (Tolkien)
[]Dune (Frank Herbert )
[X]Beowulf (unknown)
[]The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Laurence Sterne)
[2]The Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis)
[X]Till We Have Faces (CS Lewis)
[X]Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë)
[X]Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
[4]Twilight series (Stephenie Meyer)
[7]Harry Potter series (J.K. Rowling)
[]Les Miserables (Victor Hugo)
[x]Let Freedom Ring (Sean Hannity)
[x]Deliver Us from Evil (Sean Hannity)
[]Who's Looking Out For You? (Bill O'Reilly)
[]The Forgotten Man (Amity Shlaes)
[X]Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)
[X]Through the Looking Glass (Lewis Carroll)
[X]Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift)
[x]Moby Dick (Herman Melville)
[x]Great Expectation (Charles Dickens)
[x]The Adventures of Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens)
[x]A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens)
[]David Copperfield (Charles Dickens)
[]A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)
[]War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy)
[X]Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain)
[X]Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
[X]The Prince and the Pauper (Mark Twain)
[X]Catch 22 (Joseph Heller)
[X]The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
[6]Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
[2]Any Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle)
[]The Lost World (Arthur Conan Doyle)
[X]War of the Worlds (H.G. Wells)
[X]Time Machine (H.G. Wells)
[X]The Invisible Man (H.G. Wells)
[]Journey to the Center of the Earth (Jules Verne)
[]20,000 leagues under the sea (Jules Verne)
[]From the Earth to the Moon (Jules Verne)
[X]Around the World in Eighty Days (Jules Verne)
[X]Jungle Book (Rudyard Kipling)
[X]Treasure Island (R.L. Stevenson)
[]Kidnapped (R.L. Stevenson)
[X]Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (R.L. Stevenson)
[X]Animal Farm (George Orwell)
[]The Princess Bride (S. Morgenstern/William Goldman)
[]The Princess and the Goblin (George Macdonald)
[]At the Back of the North Wind (George Macdonald)
[]the Club of Queer Trades (G.K. Chesterton)
[2]any Father Brown (G.K. Chesterton)
[]Lonesome Dove (Larry McMurtry)
[X]The World of Pooh (A.A. Milne)
[]The Never Ending Story (Ende)
[X]The Grapes of Wrath (SteinBECK) (Steinbeck, and EW.)
[X]The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway)
[S]For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway)
[]The Once and Future King (T.H. White)
[X]The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame)
[4]A Wrinkle in Time (L'Engle) [I AM COUNTING THIS AS A SERIES OKAY] [OKAY.]
[X]Watership Down (Richard Adams)
[]The Plague Dogs (Richard Adams)
[X]1984 (George Orwell)
[X]Brave New World ( Aldous Huxley)
[4]Series of Unfortunate Events (Lemony Snicket/Daniel Handler)
[]Artemis Fowl (Eoin Colfer)
[X]Betsy-Tacy (Maud Hart Lovelace)
[]Inkheart trilogy (Cornelia Funke)
[X]Ella Enchanted (Gail Carson Levine)
[X]Bridge to Terabithia (Katherine Patterson)
[X]To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
[]Great Gilly Hopkins (Katherine Patterson) (Stupid book.)
[]All Creatures Great and Small (James Herriot) [ALSO A SERIES]
[]Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh)
[X]Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen)
[]The Cat Who Wished to Be a Man (Lloyd Alexander)
[]The Prydain Chronicles (Lloyd Alexander)
[X]Out of the Silent Planet (C.S. Lewis)
[]Dracula (Bram Stoker)
[]Something Wicked This Way Comes (Ray Bradbury)
[all]any Agatha Christie (just count 'em up)
[X]A Little Princess (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
[S]The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoevsky)
[X]The House of Mirth ( Edith Wharton)
[X]The Scarlet Pimpernel (Baroness Emmuska Orczy)
[X]Captain Blood ( Rafael Sabatini)
[]Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)
[X]Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky)
[X]Rebecca (Daphne du Maurier)
[X]The Magnificent Ambersons (Booth Tarkington)
[ALL]Peter Wimsey mysteries (Dorothy Sayers)
[10+]Any P.G. Wodehouse
[X]Sarum (Edward Rutherfurd)
[X]Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
[X]The Metamorphoses (Ovid)
[]The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka) (PARTS, IN GERMAN)
[X]Titus Andronicus (Shakespeare)
[ALL] all other Shakespeare (just count 'em)
[]The King of Elfland's Daughter (Lord Dunsany)
[]The Char-Woman's Shadow (Lord Dunsany)
[]Wonder Tales (Lord Dunsany)
[]The Worm Ouroboros (ER Eddison)
[]Mistress of Mistresses (ER Eddison)
[]Lud-in-the-Mist (Hope Mirrlees)
[]Jurgen (James Branch Cabell)
[]Something About Eve: A Comedy of Fig-Leaves (James Branch Cabell)
[]The Silver Stallion (James Branch Cabell)
[]The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian (Robert E. Howard)
[]The Bloody Crown of Conan (Robert E. Howard)
[]The Conquering Sword of Conan (Robert E. Howard)
[]Savage Tales of Solomon Kane (Robert E. Howard)
[]The Well at the World's End (William Gibson)
[X]Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
[X]Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe)
[X]The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck) (SO GROSS)
[X]Peter Pan (James Barrie)
[]The Search for Delicious (Natalie Babbitt)
[X]All Quiet on the Western Front (Remarch)
[]M.A.S.H. (Richard Hooker)
[6]The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
[X]Lord of the Flies (William Golding)
[]2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur C. Clarke)
[]The Enchanted Forest Chronicles (Patricia C. Wrede)
[X]The Pushcart War (Jean Merrill)

Interesting book list. I bet it was made by a homeschooler.

Audacity of deceit

President Obama seems to have learned well this lesson, perfected by the left over the past eight years: If you lie about history and events enough, the lie becomes the truth as far as most people are concerned.

A lesson learned

Bethany was briefly interviewed by a reporter. You'll have to read about her experience.

I have been interviewed by reporters four times. Every single one of them has taken my words and twisted them to fit her agenda. Even when I was careful to be very, very clear.

Why?

Why would President Obama be trying to take the census away from the Commerce Department?

Here's an idea. Can you say power grab? This argument against it is from a former census director.

This guy is brazen.

Time flies

It does. When I'm working and listening to Issues, Etc., time flies.

I am trying to get my office cleaned out so that I can get my scrapbooking stuff moved up here and organized. So I have spent several hours going through old paperwork: sorting, trashing, putting in the shred pile. I've managed to clear out one huge Rubbermaid box worth of paper and several smaller things. Old tax records that need to stay around are now in the basement.

Normally this feels like drudgery, but Todd Wilken and his guests have been keeping me company. Thanks guys!

Hypocrisy watch

I'm sorry. I will post something upbeat later. But I despise hypocrisy.

I love The Black Sphere.

I really would like an Obama fan to defend this. Have you ever heard one of them honestly address the issues of Fannie/Freddie, Franklin Raines, Chris Dodd, etc. ? I haven't.

Seventeen and counting

I was challenged by a drive-by commenter on a post in which I called President Obama a hypocrite. I stand by that. He is a hypocrite.

Did anyone besides me see his big no-lobbyists-in-this-administration speech? It was all show. He has already exempted 17 lobbyists from the rule. And as this story notes, you won't hear that in the American media. It was left to the Times of India to cover what is really happening in our government.

We can add a second tax cheat to his cabinet when Tom Daschle is confirmed. (Oh, yeah, by the way Daschle is a lobbyist and so is his wife.)

Scrapping haven

I've been making plans to turn my office into a combination scrapbooking room/office. I've been looking at storage options and trying to figure out how I could configure things. Now that we're thinking about moving, it may not happen in this house, but I want a workable srapbooking area in my next house it not here.

So, I've been looking at ideas on line. This page has lots of different rooms. I love this one, although my color choices would be different. I would probably go with a beach-y color scheme. Here are some more.

I have a feeling when It comes down to it and I finally get to set up my scrapping space, I'll probably give Emily a call. She has the organizing gift. I seem to be missing that gene.

Unfathomable ingratitude

For several days, everywhere I went people were talking about the safe landing of US Airways Flight 1549. It was a beautiful piece of piloting. You would expect that everyone on that plane would be feeling grateful to be alive and ready to make the most of each day.

Not exactly. There are actually passengers thinking of suing US Airways. One guy who got a bloody nose says that he doesn't know yet how much emotional damage he has suffered. He says, “I just want to be made whole.” Snort.

If you want to read more go here.

And here's a piece in the Wall Street Journal about the underlying problem.

Oinking stimulus

I cannot believe that our leaders really believe that the proposed spending is going to save the economy. And I truly do not believe most of them do believe it. Unfortunately, I think many are using this perceived crisis to push their agenda and trap us in spending for years to some.

Michelle Malkin is calling this the "Generational Theft Act" and she has links on her blog to both bills, as well as a lot of information about what they contain. Can someone tell me how this helps the economy:

"The House Democrats' bill includes $335 million for sexually transmitted disease education and prevention programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned."

What?! Add to that $400 million for HIV and chlamydia testing. Huh?

Huge new spending on education: $150 billion that would more than double federal expenditures on something they shouldn't even be messing in.

Read more about how this bill will not do what the democrats are saying it will. Here. Here.

And call your congressman and senators.

Update: An info filled piece from Human Events.

More on climate change

The American Thinker has an excellent article on climate change. Marc Sheppard makes the excellent point that the global warming alarmists are losing their grip on the American mind. The growing scientific outcry against their theory, coupled with facts that show a halt--and even a reversal--of the warming trend, have them frantically scrambling to get laws passed while they still can.

Big Hollywood

There's a great new website called Big Hollywood. It is all about Hollywood and the movies, with a healthy dose of politics and cultural commentary thrown in, all from a conservative point of view.
It is an opportunity for the conservatives who live and work in Hollywood to share their views, like this today from Ari David.

It's an awesome site, and another reason I almost never make it to my newspaper anymore.

Week One in the Obamanation

Well, the first week is over and, unfortunately, I am not surprised. Obama is, so far, exactly what I thought he would be.

He's arrogant. He's a hypocrite. And did anyone really believe he meant it about reducing abortions? His veep thinks that paying taxes is patriotic; I guess his Treasury nominee didn't get the memo.

We know that the press is in the tank, so there are things we aren't likely to hear much about. Like the horrible irony that a disproportionate number of African-American babies are victims of the abortions that Obama supports.

Busy week & miscellaneous

This is one of the busiest weeks of the year, every year. The Symposia at the Seminary always brings a lot of friends and a lot of activity. We had dear friends here last night and spent today at a conference at church. Tonight was a trip to Mad Anthony's.

I'll be spending a good chunk of my time at the seminary the next couple of days, and there are things going on in the evenings, so I may not be online much.

The happy news of today was President Bush's commutation of the sentences of Ramos and Compean.

I've found a house that I really like and am hoping to take Colin to see it. Yes, it is walking distance to church. No, our house isn't ready to sell. Yes, I have a lot of work to do.

If you're interested in my reading challenge progress, I'm keeping track of my reading on my book blog.

Recipe: Sweet Potato Lentil Soup

Tonight's dinner, thanks to a fellow homeschool mom who posted it earlier this week on Facebook:

Sweet Potato and Lentil Soup

2 medium sweet potatoes, about 12 oz each, peeled & cut into 1/2" chunks
2 large stalks celery, chopped
1 cup onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 T curry powder
1 T grated, peeled, fresh ginger
2 t ground cumin
1 t ground coriander
1 t ground white pepper
1/8 t ground red pepper
1 (16 oz) pkg brown lentils
2 (14.5) oz vegetable or non-fat chicken broth
6 c water
1# ground sausage (optional)
nonfat plain yogurt and lime wedges (optional)


In stock pot or non-reactive dutch oven wiped or sprayed with olive oil, over medium heat until hot, add sweet potatoes, celery, and onion. Cook until tender, about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add garlic, curry powder, ginger, cumin, coriander, and ground peppers. Stirring, cook one minute. While vegetables are cooking, rinse lentils with cold water and discard any stones or shriveled lentils. To vegetables in stock pot, add lentils, broth, and water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer. Simmer 25 minutes or until lentils are tender. Serve with yogurt and lime wedge. Yield: approx. 14 (1 1/3 c servings) ~ 1 gm fat per 1 1/3 c

Note: I didn't use sausage. I also didn't use non-fat broth or yogurt.

Blogroll flux

My blogroll is going to be shifting and changing over the next week or so. I need to add some new friends who don't fit old categories. I need to make some updates. If I accidentally lose you for a day or two, don't worry. You'll be back.

So much to say

It's hard to know where to start. Maybe here with a Treasury Secretary designee who has a problem with paying the taxes he owes. Of course, not paying $34,000 in taxes is a "minor infraction" according to Obama aides. I'm sure that the IRS would look at it like that if it was you or me.

Is anyone paying more attention to these guys yet? Or these facts? I can almost guarantee that she won't. Although, as the Daily Tech article states, "Cold is more damaging than heat, " the left has hung it's hopes on global warming, and they aren't letting go. It's about power,not truth.

And then there's this. Why exactly Has Hillary been nominated to be Secretary of State?

On the positive side, I had a really yummy sushi lunch today with a friend from college who I had not seen since the spring of 1985. Thanks, Facebook!

How do you read so many books?

Soon after I posted my first reading challenge post, I got this question from a friend. Since then it has been repeated many times. So I started thinking about it and came up with an answer. Or several answers.

Reading is my default activity. If I'm not actively doing something else I'm reading. I read while I'm waiting, whether it's for a train, an appointment, or on hold with an insurance company. I read on the treadmill or recumbent bike. I read while I dry my hair. I read while I cook--although that is more likely to be a magazine--and I have been known to read while I vacuum.

I read while I eat, unless we're all sitting down for supper together. I read while I "watch" TV or a movie unless it's really, really good. (House, Lost, 24, or The Office.) I read before I fall asleep, sometimes for far longer than I should.

I also read fairly quickly. I found out when I was about 12 that there were people who paid to take classes to read like I do. Unless I'm doing genealogical research I read in "chunks" not words. When I look at a page I see sentences or phrases as wholes.

Like many other things, I think that reading improves with practice. Exposure to a wide vocabulary and range of writing styles makes reading easier. Working through a difficult book exercises the muscles of literacy that make the next one go faster. This is why I read my kids a large variety of books when they were small. I wanted them--from the beginning--to hear many different ways words could be put together: the rhythms of Seuss, the vocabulary of Beatrix Potter, the stories of a host of authors too numerous to mention, but many of which enriched my own childhood.

And if you still wonder how I read so much, come and see my house. I would far rather read, scrapbook, write, cook, search for dead relatives...than clean my house.

Oh, by the way, here are a couple more people who read a lot of books.

Easy recipe, lazy blog post

I've spent the last couple of days dealing with a son who has had a tough time with having his wisdom teeth out. I also had food to make for a baby shower, so I've been a bit lax in my blogging.

I've had a couple of requests for this recipe, so I figured that I would just post it here.


Marinated Parmesan

1/3 lb. Parmesan
1/3 lb. Asiago
3 cloves garlic, crushed
2 t. dried oregano
1t. freshly ground black pepper
1/2 t. red pepper flakes
3/4 c. extra virgin olive oil
1/4 c. balsamic vinegar

Chop the cheese into chunks and place in food processor. Pulse until they are the size of peas.

Put cheeses in a medium-size bowl and add all of the ingredients except the vinegar. Stir to blend.
Cover and let stand at room temp for four hours or in the refrigerator for up to a week. Bring to room temp before serving.

When ready to serve add balsamic vinegar and stir with a fork so that it blends with the oil. Serve with slices of baguette.

I suggest a glass of wine.

Book review

I have a book about homeschooling to recommend. This kind of surprises me.

First, it is unusual for me to read a homeschooling book. Most of them make me crazy. And after thirteen years of this lifestyle, I certainly don't want to read that I'm doing it wrong! Secondly, many of them are useful to new homeschoolers or a subset of homeschoolers, but no one else would really want to read them. Homeschooling: A Family's Journey is a good book for long-timers, newbies, wannabes, and folks who would just like to understand homeschoolers a little bit better.

After I got this book home from the library I was trying to figure out what made me pick it up and look at it. It does say "HOMESCHOOLING" in red letters on the front, so I guess it isn't entirely surprising that I looked at it. But I think that what really got my attention was the picture of the family on the front. It was what we like to call a "pile picture." The family is kind of piled in, leaning on each other. They like each other. They aren't stuffy. They look like a family we could be friends with.

But the thing that made me bring it home was this sentence inside the front cover: "Today's homeschoolers succeed not because they do "school" things better than schools do--but because they do better things than school." Yes. In a nutshell. (This is part of the reason calls for accountability to the school-ish powers that be drive us crazy.)

So I decided to read it last night. Not with the highest of expectations, because it has been years since I read a book about homeschooling that really did anything for me. But I found myself engaged. I stayed awake late reading. I finished it this morning. I marked pages as I read because I kept finding nuggets that resonated. This book is about family and what education is.

Several of the pages I marked are going to turn into blog posts of their own. The book I read is from the library, but I'm going to buy my own so that I can mark it up and--eventually--loan it out. It is that good.

Back into the swing

For me, as, I dare say, for most people, the worst part about a vacation is coming home.

It's not just the obvious, I-was-laying-on-a-sunny-beach-and-now-I'm-back-in-the-gray-coldness, although that certainly is a factor. There is also the fact that I have to get back to all of the normal things. It's not the cooking and straightening that are an issue; I did a fair amount of both on vacation. Same with laundry.

It's the dentist appointments.
And answering the phone.
And doing my volunteer stuff.
And getting back on top of what's going on in the world.
And worrying about whether my kids are learning anything.
And paying the bills.
And on and on.
You know. All of the STUFF.

And the stuff isn't bad in itself. Most of the time I even enjoy the majority of it. But after a week of tuning it all out, it is jarring to turn it all back on.

I'll be back to my normal, unrelaxed self in a couple of days. And in another four years or so I'll get another vacation.

New Year's resolutions

I was really happy to go back to last January and see that I had made no new Year's Resolutions.
Really, really happy.

Why? Because I could be relatively certain that I hadn't accomplished them. Not much has changed since last year.

2008 Reading Challenge revisited

My first reading challenge went pretty well. I didn't quite finish all of the categories, but I read more books than it required since some didn't fit.

I'm looking forward to doing this year's reading challenges, and have set up an additional blog to handle the ongoing updates to my reading lists.