greaterthansparrows

We broke down and got a smallish artificial tree last year.  It came up from the basement, finally, on Wednesday and was set up for our first Christmas in a new place.  It doesn't have to be watered, trimmed, or vacuumed after--and it's proof that we have gotten old and poor, that we decided the time had come that we weren't going to wrestle with live trees, which I love, anymore.  Thank you again to our youngest, who made this our gift for last Christmas. It still has the tree skirt of crocheted Christmas squares made by Janette Draper and bought by us at the Bryant Elementary bazaar so many years ago.  They moved to Oregon some twenty years ago, and every time I bring this out of the box, I miss them. We don't have a top to our tree, something I guess I need to solve, but that bluebird was a tender gift last year, somewhat in token of this blog.  My dear friend tried to find a sparrow, but couldn't--so if there's a "blue bird of happiness" i...

I haven't been here for a while, and I haven't put up a recipe for a while. We're trying to make more progress in unpacking, and I was in the throes of another project.  Last month a friend gave me a generous amount of rhubarb from her garden, and I went looking for recipes for rhubarb cake, because there was such a yummy one at the reception for Carole's department commencement. I found a long list, and tried to eyeball them and figure which ones would be best.  There was a potluck picnic coming up, and I decided to make two small cakes, cutting recipes in half, so I could try more than one.  The cream cake originally called for a cake mix, then the rhubarb and sugar, then cream, and I thought that sounded like too much total fat, and unhelpful to cut in half; it would also require buying a cake mix.  So I found a rhubarb pudding cake recipe in the list, a small cake, which called for pouring boiling water over all of it rather than whipping cream.  I amalg...

Christmas is coming on apace, and now that the first pumpkin bread has been made, and we have a tree, it feels real.  There's only a week left, which is a little alarming if I think about it. Carole leaves for Tennessee tomorrow, to spend Christmas with her sister Christina and her husband Chris. She helped us get a tree, and we decided that the time had come to go artificial, because we weren't up for the process of hauling and setting up a real one.  We now have a very nice, small one that doesn't look like nylon needles, and doesn't take up too much space.  It's supposed to be a Virginia pine, with just a faint frosting on the tips. Now the only problem is that the one box of Christmas stuff with the ornaments that we have made, is missing in action.  The lights we don't need now, those were right where they belonged.  The ornaments which have seen better days, those are sitting in front of me--I have picked over them and hung some, but we need the smaller ...

In the insanity that is today, firmly not allowing myself to think past my lesson until my lesson was past, I found yesterday that both of us had bought bananas somehow and neither of us had eaten many.  This meant that  there were bananas now past their prime and a soon-to-be-absent cook.  Sooo.... banana bread was added to the tasks of the day.  One loaf will be given to the lovely, kind friend who is taking us to the airport, and one loaf will be cut in a few minutes with the remainder traveling with us and being offered to those who live where we are going. All the packing is done, the laundry is done, plans have been set, scrambled, canceled (Tabernacle Choir tickets are inadvertently for the wrong weekend so they will have to be used for someone else) and a couple of last quick errands for the morning are easily in reach.  Post office, Brown & Haley outlet for the sons-in-law.  I am so glad we are not dealing with an o'dark o'clock departure!...

It's beet season, and that may gladden your heart or be something you care nothing about. Beets were the only food that my oldest daughter, in her high chair, ever spit right back in my face. Daughter #2 didn't like them either, though her reaction was less vehement.  Daughter #3 was favorable, but I made the mistake of trying them on her while her older sisters were present--you know, dinner time--and both of them immediately clamored at her that those were awful, you don't want them!  So she didn't.  (She eats them now as an adult.) Hubby and I like beets a lot.  Jonathan and his new fiancee were having dinner with us, and they were still finding out things about each other.  I had either cooked beets or the topic came up, I don't remember which.  Jonathan turned to Maeby and asked, "Do you like beets?" "Not really, no.  Do you like beets?" "I despise beets ."  He turned to me and said, "That's settled. ...

Fall harvest means apples, but ours are already gone, and pears.  I wrote about summer being done, and going to go  try a new variety of pears .  They are called 'Tosca' and they are so good!  No idea whether I will ever see them again, but I hope they catch on.  These were advertised and brought in from a particular farm, and I was curious to try them.  (They were from Top Foods.) So this is my report. They are the size of a small Bartlett, you know, the ones that don't get big around the bottom, and these don't turn yellow: the green just goes paler and takes a slight yellowish tinge.  The ones in the store were already at the eating or eat-tomorrow stage.  The flesh looks like an Anjou but without the grainy feel, but not as bright white as a Bartlett.  They are very juicy, make sure you have a napkin!  They are very sweet and then in those best spots, intensely flavorful.  The ad terms them as having an "exotic flavor" and I g...

Here's a recipe I found and love, thinking about the apples which will be waiting.  Fat-free cream cheese was the new thing when this was published in Cooking Light, and now it's hard to find. (Safeway's Lucerne brand offers it, at least where I live.) Use low-fat if you like.  Helpful hint--you can substitute fat-free cream cheese for half the butter in just about any cake or muffin if you want.  This recipe has as much butter as I would use in anything anyway,otherwise I would look at a recipe and say, nope. Twice as much apple as flour, this is really yummy.   CINNAMON APPLE CAKE 1 ¾ cups sugar, divided ½ cup stick margarine, softened (or butter) 1 tsp. vanilla 6 oz fat-free cream cheese (okay if you want to throw in the whole 8 oz. block) 2 large eggs 1 ½ cups flour 1 ½ tsp baking powder ¼ tsp salt 1 ½ -2 tsp cinnamon 3 cups chopped or shredded peeled and cored apple Preheat oven to 350o. Beat 1 ½ cups sugar, margarine, vanilla, and cream cheese at medium...

Hubby is now walking, haltingly, short distances without the crutches, and driving bothers him not at all, so the trip is on for tomorrow.  Our activities may be curtailed in the particulars, but the escape is not foiled.  It fell to me, though, to run the necessary errands today, and short as they were, relatively speaking, they weren't short enough to keep me from being wobbly by the time I was home. I had to carry groceries in, ferrying bags inside the front door so that the car was empty, then reconnoitering on what I could handle at once into the kitchen.  I took up the lightest ones together, weight was fine, and started through the passage, only to feel one slip away just as I got almost there.  I lost it to the floor. It wasn't the bag with two pineapples ($1 each, did you ever see such a price?).  It wasn't the bag with bananas, blueberries, and two yogurts.  Oh no, it had to be the bag with a dozen and a half eggs. Of which, two were completel...

Last night's post made me hungry, but no, I did not make bread today.  I have been writing and preparing my lesson for this week, and I haven't been thinking about anything else.  But I promised an occasional recipe when I started this undertaking, so how about something that would be great with fresh bread? It started with fresh pumpkin which needed to be used.  Fresh pumpkin is really yummy for pie, and Splenda can't be tasted compared with sugar in it, so sugar-free pumpkin pie is a winner around here, but you only need about half a pumpkin to make it.  I had torn out a recipe for turkey-pumpkin chili from the paper a while ago, but in the repeated grab and retrieve maneuvers with a toddler in the house, it was gone.  So what does every modern woman do? Go online, of course. I found two recipes that looked good, and sat down and hemmed and hawed and drew up an amalgamation to try out.  It was so good, that my daughter-in-law asked if we could make it...