Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Little Patriotic Cheesecakes

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Noah's Endeavor is hosting a dance tomorrow night at the Boys and Girls Club and everyone attending has been asked to bring a finger food. We're taking little cheesecakes, decorated for the 4th of July. It's the same recipe that I used in this long ago post:

Tie Dye Cheesecake

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I baked the little cheesecakes in silicon muffin cups and cut the baking time down to 15 minutes at 350 degrees F., followed by 15-20 degrees at 275 degrees.


The mighty mountain of cheesecakes:
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This is the first dance Blaze has agreed to go to. He's even asked one of the little girls from swimming class to dance with him there, and she said yes.

Schooling Never Really Ends

One of the many obstacles that Blaze has to overcome, is a reading disability. Our progress is very slow in this direction, but it is happening. However, if we took the entire summer off, the way the schools do, we would loose what we have gained. I have continued to have him do one page a day in a simple phonics workbook and I found an app. for the Ipod that was only 99 cents and has over 300 sight word flash cards. The educational Ipod apps mean that Blaze can be learning new words while we're driving to swimming class, or his various appointments.

When we went to Jacksonville, a couple days ago, to pick up the newly repaired desktop computer, we went to the Anthropologie store and Blaze saw this children's cookbook that he really wanted.

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The deal I've made with him is that I will buy the cookbook, if he can read all of the words on that sight word program without assistance.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Sketch Trick

I can't draw a realistic person to save my life, but I wanted the story I'm writing for Blaze to look like it had hand-drawn illustrations. The solution for this is the photo-editing features on Photobucket. I am able to change my photographs so that they look like sketches, erase any background I don't want, print them out, and color them with colored pencils. It's like having custom coloring pages.

Before:

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After:

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Before:

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The black and white sketch stage:

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After coloring with pencils:

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Saturday, June 26, 2010

Ready to Support the Team

I think I'm ready to cheer on the United States soccer team against Ghana this afternoon. I made soccer bento lunches. America is a melting pot of culture, so even though the food isn't especially American, the spirit is there.

A soccer ball made of sweet rice and decorated with toasted nori, cooked spinach "grass", grape tomatoes from the garden, vanilla yogurt with fresh raspberries and blueberries, and a tuna salad sandwich made with a cream puff shell.

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I figured we needed a festive dessert, as well, so there are cream puffs filled with whipped cream and strawberries.

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This should be an exciting game! The two teams are pretty evenly matched, and one of Blaze's best friends is from Ghana. We live in very ethnically diverse housing and several of our neighbors are from African countries.

Friday, June 25, 2010

Fiction Friday : Chapter One (part 1)

I started writing a story for Blaze, based on the character we created for his airship pirate Halloween costume last Fall. In the past, I have found this blog to be a good way to stay motivated to finish projects, so I decided that if I post a bit of the story each week, I will stay motivated to finish it. I need a bit of motivational help, because I have to rewrite more than one chapter of the story, because it was not backed up when the computer crashed. I had been hopeful that the information on the computer could still be saved, but yesterday we got the message that the hard drive will have to be replaced. So, anyway, here's the beginning of what I did save.



Chapter One (part 1): A change of Schedule





Chicago was a railroad hub. The city was like the spider sitting in the center of a web of tracks. This giant spider of commerce and transportation, also, had an insatiable thirst for shipping; drawing in all of the heavily laden import ships that traveled Lake Michigan, and spewing forth ships, equally heavily laden, with it's own products to sell to the rest of the world. But, when the airships needed a landing field, that honor went to Elgin, 40 miles to the West. The land was cheaper and the growing industrial city needed a fast, reliable way to get its products distributed.

In this busy air port, a tall, thin, young man, dressed all in black, sat on an unlabeled barrel that looked suspiciously like a powder keg. His left foot was on the ground, but his right ankle was resting on his left knee. He was using the sole of his boot to strike a match. He watched the flame devour the wooden matchstick. Then he shook out the flame with a flick of his wrist and tossed the tiny, charred stub of the match into the dust in front of him. He had obviously been occupied in this way for quite some time; there were several dozen of these blackened bits scattered near his left toe.

Penelope watched him for a while, pretending to be writing in the small notebook she carried. The man noticed her standing there, dropped his latest match, and tipped his battered top hat to her. She nodded back, even though this acknowledgement of him meant that she could no longer keep her distance. She regretted it almost as soon as she began walking towards him. As she got closer, she realized that the bandoleer he wore across his chest held sticks of dynamite, along with a vile of glowing green liquid. He struck another match, held it near his nose, and watched her through the flame for a second, before he threw it down.

" Good afternoon ma'am." He said politely, in a voice that made it clear that he was not simply clean-shaven, he was too young to shave. That made Penelope even more apprehensive about his careless playing with fire so close to explosives. The former schoolmistress inside her screamed out that he needed a good scolding, but she choked down the urge.

She looked past the boy to the aging hybrid airship behind him. With the exception of a few hot air balloons taking tourists on sight-seeing jaunts over the city, the air port was mostly occupied by modern Zeppelin style airships. They looked like giant cigars, with passenger or freight gondolas attached to their underbellies. The ship moored just beyond the boy, was slightly larger than the rest and had a small steamship attached just below the control room gondola. Hybrids had been quite fashionable twenty years earlier, but now that people had become accustomed to air travel, they no longer required the reassurance that an ocean going vessel could be detached from the airship while traveling over water. The safety record for airships was really quite good. It was said that more people died each year in carriage accidents than in airships, and the air-piracy problem had been nearly eliminated.

"Uh, hello," Penelope managed to say, while looking at the ship and trying to assess its sky-worthiness. " My employer has sent me to arrange transportation..." She was about to say more, but was interrupted by the boy typing on some raised buttons on a leather armband that covered his right arm from wrist to elbow. He bent his head towards the armband and shouted, "Hey, Captain! We got a live one down here and she's pretty!" Penelope raised an eyebrow at him, but said nothing.


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A cheerful woman's voice replied from the devise, "I will be right down!" Then there was a slight change of tone and the voice continued barely above a whisper, "and Blaze, you and I will have a little talk later, about the proper way to speak in front of a client." Penelope quickly absorbed several pieces of information from this brief exchange. The wristband worked like a telephone for talking to the people aboard the ship, the captain had sounded disappointed with the boy, but not particularly angry, and, most astonishing of all, the captain was a woman.

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Before Penelope had much time to think about this unusual situation, a woman was walking down the gangplank towards her. The only indication that Captain Neriena Wordsmith was a woman, was the long white skirt she was wearing. She wore a black military jacket with a gold epaulet on each shoulder. A large revolver hung in its holster from a wide black belt. Her hair was pulled up into a tight knot at the base of a black officer's cap, that had the bill pulled low, making it hard to see her face. She walked with a sailor's swagger and heavy soled men's work boots peeked out from under the hem of her skirt with every purposeful stride she took.

The Captain came to a stop next to the young man and placed an affectionate hand on his shoulder. "Good afternoon miss," she addressed Penelope, "Captain Wordsmith at your service, and this," she nodded towards the boy, "is Blaze. I'm sorry about his manners. I hope he didn't offend you. He is an invaluable member of my crew, but I'm afraid that he still requires a little
polish. We're working on that, but really his strengths lie in other directions."

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

My Favorite Pictures From This Past Week

Summer got off to a great start this week. We've been having thunderstorms almost every afternoon and as a result we had a rainbow two days in a row.

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This barred owl just happened to sit in the perfect spot to have the crescent moon directly behind his head.

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The pool slide is only being turned on at the end of swimming class on Thursdays if the children have worked hard and listened to their instructors the rest of the week, so this picture represents more than just having fun.

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World Cup Fan Food

World Cup fever has really hit our housing complex. At a birthday party that Blaze and I attended Monday night, all that the dads at the party talked about was soccer, and the neighborhood boys have been playing soccer every afternoon.

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What makes watching these neighborhood games better than watching the games on t.v., is that no one has a vuvuzela,yet. If you have missed the World Cup so far this year, a vuvuzela is a South African horn used to cheer on the players. They make every game sound like the stadium is full of giant bees. I think we will be seeing them here soon, as well, because I heard yesterday, that they were recently passed out to people attending a Tampa vs. Miami baseball game.



I can never pass up a chance to play with my food, so last night I made a soccer themed dinner.

For the soccer field pizza, I made homemade pesto as the "grass" ( recipe found here: Pesto Recipe).

The big game! The mushroom team faces-off against their arch rivals the pepperoni team
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It looks like it will be a close match! DH and Blaze are both pepperoni supporters, but I'm cheering for the mushroom side.

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At half time, the teams are even, and they are both looking hot and delicious (the meatball soccer ball was added about halfway through the cooking time, because the meatball was already fully cooked from the day before, when I made hamburgers).
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But, by the end of the game, the pepperoni side was the clear winner, with more pieces eaten.

Supporters of both sides got a prize, though. Chocolate cupcakes decorated to look like soccer balls.

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This morning, we will be hurrying home from swimming, to watch the United States play Algeria.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Happy Summer Solstice!

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Blaze sifting sand so we could make sand-dough for an indoor sand castle that will go on our summer nature table:
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Indoor Sand Castle

3 Cups of Sand

1 1/2 Cups corn starch

1 Tablespoon cream of tartar

1 Cup water

1. Mix the sand, corn starch, cream of tartar, and water in an old pot.

2. Cook mixture over low heat, stirring constantly.

3. When it is thick, remove it from the heat. Allow the mixture to cool.

4. Mold the sand-dough into desired shapes. I used a bottle to roll it out flat (I didn't want the sand to damage my rolling pin), and then shaped the tower using the bottle as a mold.

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5. Leave to air dry. Any loose sand can be removed with sandpaper after the castle is fully dry.

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The sand castles make great votive candle holders.

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Saturday, June 19, 2010

Happy Father's Day!

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DH is a huge Star Wars fan,as well as a great dad, so for Father's Day we used the new Star Wars cookie cutters, we bought at the William Sonoma store, to bake Darth Vader and Yoda cookies.

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The Yoda cookies are rosemary shortbread. The recipe can be found here:

Rosemary Shortbread Cookies Recipe

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For the Darth Vader Cookies, I combined two flavors that DH really loves, dark chocolate and cinnamon.

1 Cup softened butter

1 Cup sugar

1/2 Cup dark cocoa powder

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 1/2 Cups unbleached white flour

Mix butter and sugar until well blended. Add remaining ingredients and mix. Use hands to squeeze the dough together. roll out to a 1/4 inch on a floured board and cut out cookie shapes. Bake at 275 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes.

I don't want my kitchen gizmos to be single use only, so I had to try something non-cookie related with the cookie cutters. Here is Boba Fett toast:

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Friday, June 18, 2010

As the Garden Grows (episode 3)

On today's episode, we see what happens when the garden is neglected for a full week. Will it ever recover? Watch and find out..


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The final week of school, I was far too busy to spend any time in the garden, and then we were out of town for three days, so nature did her best to reclaim our little plot of land. She works at an accelerated pace here in Florida, anyway, so in a week's time we had weeds everywhere, that were at least knee high. The bamboo trellis had begun to rot and fall apart, as well.

Every insect in the area, seemed to have moved in during our absence. I have been complaining, that while other gardeners have a rainbow of fruits and vegetables this time of year, we have a rainbow of bugs.

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Not everything needed my constant attention to thrive, though. The green bean vines are doing a fine job of covering the little bamboo hut, we have lots of tiny tomatoes, and will soon have broccoli.

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After two days of weeding, things were starting to get back under control.

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We even had our first real harvest:

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Blaze and I treated ourselves, for all our hard work, by having our first little fire in the new fire pit we built.

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Then today, I received the following e-mail:

"Last night at 7:30 a reclamation pipe near our gardens became disconnected. I called the police and they said they had already ordered shut off. However, the pipe drained all night until 8:45 this AM and flooded the road and the first three rows of gardens. Our gardens were flooded, at least 1/2 way up my beds. I met with Dr. Clark at 9AM (for something unrelated to this incident) and informed him of the occurrence. He said he would notify gardeners about this since reclaimed water is not water fit for garden use/consumption in this form. He hasn't sent anything and think it is important that at least you know. The flood extended at least half-way towards our water pump. Seems we lost our crops. Reclaimed waters from golf courses are particularly high in toxic material."

I'm hoping that the thunderstorm and heavy rains that are happening right now, are washing away all of that contaminated water, but I know so little about this subject.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

There are Strange Things Done in the Mid-Day Sun...

Every cloud has a silver lining.

First, the bad part:
Last week, I had been using the desk top computer to work on a story I'm writing for Blaze, and to sign Blaze up for swimming classes. I left several windows open and went off to read Blaze his bedtime story. When I came back to the computer, it was frozen. It wouldn't close the pages that were open or even switch between them. It, also, wouldn't turn off, so I unplugged it and then plugged it back in. When it turned back on, it had become nothing but a bright white screen. This time, I don't have a single teenager in the house that I can blame this on, which means I managed to kill a computer all by myself.

The good part:

The computer is still under warranty, and driving it all the way to the Apple Store in Jacksonville ( a two hour drive) wasn't such a hassle since we were going to Kingsley Plantation, just North of Jacksonville, anyway.

The other good part:

DH has left me with the laptop computer, which he had been using at the plantation. It has all of the pictures and videos he downloaded over the past couple weeks.

Archeology field school is obviously not just digging and sifting, there's a fair amount of silliness thrown in. I'm not sure if this is so they can keep their sanity while working in this brutal Florida heat, or if this is what the heat does TO them.

This is the professor:
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If this whole archeology thing doesn't work out, it's good to have another skill to fall back on. How about acting?







Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Cooling Drinks for Hot Days

Blaze began summer swimming lessons this week,

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which is a great way to cool down, but with the weather reports saying that every day in the foreseeable future will be in the 90s, we need to beat the heat in more than one way.

Italian Sodas

1. Start with a tall glass, filled with ice

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2. Fill a 2-ounce stainless steel ramekin with your choice of fruit flavored syrup and pour it over the ice ( this is how I learned to measure out the ingredients when I was working at a cafe years ago, but if you don't have one of these little cups, use 3 Tablespoons of syrup).

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3. Fill the ramekin with "half and half" and add that to the glass. Fill the remainder of the glass with unflavored soda water (seltzer). Gently stir.

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4. Whipped cream and sprinkles are optional, but they sure make it look more festive.

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Ginger-Peach Smoothie (Vegan)

Place a 1-inch chunk of peeled, fresh ginger in a blender and blend it briefly. Add 20-ounces of frozen peaches, 2 cups of apple juice, and 2 frozen bananas, broken up into chunks.

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Blend until smooth.

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Makes enough to fill 3 tall glasses.

Monday, June 14, 2010

Civil War Era Fort Field Trip

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Yesterday, we took a field trip to Fort Clinch, a Civil War era fort neat Fernandina, Florida.

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Blaze had been playing with this head-lamp flashlight in DH's room at the plantation before we left in the morning, and insisted he needed to take it with us. I thought it was silly to wear it during a bright, sunny day, but it turned out that there were plenty of dark passageways at the fort, where he could play with the light.

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The laundry:
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A costumed interpreter explained about fort life and then wrote Blaze a pass so he could leave.

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Crafty Crow