Recipe Tuesday

Pumpkin Spice latte Recipe from Betty Cooker

Ingredients
Lattes

2  cups milk

2  tablespoons canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix)

1  to 2 tablespoons sugar (to taste)

1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

1    tablespoon vanilla

1/2 cup hot brewed coffee       

 

Garnish, if desired

Whipped cream

Dash pumpkin pie spice

2 cinnamon sticks

In 2-quart saucepan, heat milk, pumpkin and sugar over medium heat until hot (do not boil). Remove from heat. Stir in 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice, the vanilla and coffee. 2 Pour into 2 large mugs. Garnish each with whipped cream, dash pumpkin pie spice and a cinnamon stick

Tips:
Allow the Pumpkin-Spice Latte to cool, and serve over ice for a cold version.
If you do not have pumpkin pie spice at home, make your own by combining 1 tablespoon of ground cinnamon, 2 teaspoons of ground ginger and 1/2 teaspoon of ground nutmeg. This will make about 2 tablespoons of pumpkin pie spice mix.

http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/pumpkin-spice-latte/a1ef6f8d-3c99-4b9d-86e4-25bdb1c46846?ESRC=16030&WT.mc_id=partner_facebook_Bettycrocker


When this recipe showed up on my Facebook news feed I knew I had to try it for myself. I love pumpkin spice lattes from Starbucks but I don't like to pay $5 for a cup of yummy so it is rare that I get to sit back and enjoy a treat just for me. This morning I decided it was the day to give this recipe a try. Let me tell you that the only that would have made it better is whipped cream on top. I added a full cup of coffee instead of just half a cup. It was a lovely way to start my day.

I hope your day is filled with your favorite coffee flavors,love and laughter. Be well my friends

Meal Plans

I need to go grocery shopping. Which means I need to make a list. I also need to plan two weeks worth of meals. Unfortunately all of the above falls to me. The boys in my family don't care and never have any input in what we eat until it is on the table or when I should be making dinner. I am looking for easy meals. I have two weeks left of Science and ten more weeks of my Literature class which means the next two weeks are filled. Twenty page power point on deforestation, two labs, a discussion board post on forest products, and a final covering science and a 1200 word essay on the Aeneid, read the Aeneid, a discussion board on Sakuntala, read Sakuntala. If you can't tell my next two weeks are full, very full. So what is for dinner?

Two weeks of meals:

1. Rosemary Chicken in the crock pot, with rice and a green vegetable
2. Chicken and Cheese Enchiladas
3. Tomato, Basil and Cheese Baked pasta
4. Baked Potato soup-slow cooker style
5. Huge pot of Chili that makes three meals
6. Not to worry I will freeze the leftovers to have later
7. in the two weeks. It will be vegetarian Chili
8. Another Roast Chicken with mashed cauliflower, and corn
9. Chicken noodle soup
10. Lentil soup
11. Vegetable soup
12. Curry Pumpkin soup
13. Butternut Squash Bake
14. Broccoli-Potato Soup with greens
15. Pork fried rice, with stir fried vegetables
16. Pumpkin, Barley, and sage soup

Lots of soup for the month, but soup is easy and mostly does not require a lot of meat. We are trying to lower our meat intake down to about 5%. Basically just enough so that my husband doesn't feel deprived. We watched a documentary called Forks Over Knives and it changed the way we eat. It recommends a whole food diet and we aim for that but I really like to cook. . .Most of the time anyway. It is in the works, just small changes that improve our over all health. As soon as I finish up my science class we will start family walks again. Which might help my waist line slim a little but then again it will be just in time for the holidays. I need to learn to tight rope walk, or juggle, or just plain multitasking. I will get there someday.

I hope your week is filled with crisp fall mornings, hot chocolate, Love and Laughter. Be well my friends.

Lessons learned October 9, 2011

Lessons learned a weekly debrief
October 9, 2011

I know I am a day late on my Sunday lessons learned. I hope that you will forgive me.Saturday I got into a discussion about the meaning of Jeremiah 10 with a friend of my sister in law on facebook. I did a crazy amount of research so that I would sound like I knew what I was talking about and that I made my point very clear. Which turned into a debate over Christmas. It has reached an out of control level of craziness on my part. I am compelled to answer and research and answer again. I got to read large parts of the bible because I always read ahead and further after the verse given to me. I find that the meaning of any verse when taken out of context can mean anything you want it to mean. When you see the whole picture it becomes clear, and beautiful. I found this article that said everything about Christmas trees and it is worth reading. I am posting the last few paragraphs because it sums up the whole article.

Jeremiah 10 and the “Pagan” Christmas Tree by Dr. Richard P. Bucher
From the foregoing, it is abundantly clear that the "decorated tree" to which Jeremiah 10 refers is an idol, very likely the Asherah. Therefore, it is very superficial Bible interpretation and pure silliness to understand this passage as directly referring to the use of a fir tree for Christmas! If, and I repeat, if those who set up a Christmas tree fall down and worship it as a god or goddess, complete with altars and incense stands, then Jeremiah 10 applies here. Or if someone loves their Christmas tree more than God, then such a thing might also be considered spiritual idolatry. But apart from these exceptions, I think it is abundantly clear that Christians who erect Christmas trees are NOT worshiping them as gods or goddesses, nor are they loving them more than their Savior Jesus Christ. They are simply using the Christmas tree as a fun custom, one that can remind them of Jesus who is the branch of David (Jeremiah 23:5; 33:15), the root of Jesse (Isaiah 11:1). One that can remind them of the tree that led Adam and Eve to sin, but more importantly, the tree on which Christ Jesus died to make atonement for the sins of the whole world (Acts 5:30; Gal. 3:13; 1 Peter 2:24). Christians should know that they can use a Christmas tree with a good conscience. It is unfortunate and wrong when well-meaning Christians call something sin that is not sin, and enslave the consciences of their fellow believers with imaginary sin! Shame on such Christians! Those who continue to believe that the Christmas tree is pagan and sinful, even after having their conscience correctly informed, should not use them. For it is not right to sin against conscience. This is regrettable, however, since there is absolutely nothing wrong with using a Christmas tree.

http://www.orlutheran.com/html/jer10.html

Today I learned who the Chocolate Pilot was. Sometimes I am taken off guard by something so profound that it changes a piece of me. Damian is reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for a unit study I checked out every book I could find with the words Chocolate or Candy in the title. I didn't know anything about Berlin or what the people faced after War World II. This randomly chosen book Candy Bomber The Story of Berlin's Airlift's Chocolate Pilot made me cry while I was reading it to the boys. I kept thinking how will I teach my boys to be so giving, and how do I become a better person? I hope that this story stays with me always.

I learned about where Chocolate comes from, a huge pod, from a tree in South America.

I learned that if I jump on our little trampoline with James he will say the Alphabet and count to 20 with me and he thinks it is fun.

I also learned about Confucius through his books The Doctrine of Mean and The Great Learning.

I learned all about Live Oak Trees for forestry.

I read two chapters of my science book then took a test but now I don't know what I read. I am sure it is in the well I told you about in another post. I will need to drop the bucket for the final for the information but today, right now I am tired, and my brain feels full. The learning must go on!

I hope that your week is filled with learning, love and laughter. Be well my friends.

Once upon a time. . .

I have kept sporadic journals my whole life. I still have most of them but all are unfinished and none of them are are dated. When I was younger I thought that dates were relative, that today was only one day in the vastness of life, a moment that would quickly disappear. In fact when I wrote about the night I met my husband; believe it or not, it was not about him at all. I wrote about his roommate who my ex broke up with me for. You see I didn't know my future was sitting in the living room when I dropped my new friend off. This is what I remember time frame wise (you know those people who remember every single detail about this and that down to the second? That is not me, in fact most things seem murky to me.  A deep dark well that I lower a small bucket down into and bring up pieces of a memory. So forgive me my approximate timeline.) it was a dark chilly October night in 2000.  I know it was before Halloween some time.  Maybe a week or two before that, I am sure.

I wonder if this is where the story begins. Does it begin with the ex? Do you need to know that we were together for two years? Or that we were really just friends with benefits because this girl was a little emotionally disconnected? That I was only eighteen? I think maybe it does begin here. So my ex and I decided to try a relationship. It wasn't really working. We were friends and would never be any more then that, at least on my end. Turns out on his side too. He came to me at the end of the summer and told me he had met a girl. That he really liked her and wanted to try and make it work with her. I was stunned and felt rejected. Turns out the girl worked with my estranged mother, and my siblings were being rather rude to her about the whole thing. It wasn't her fault that he didn't love me, or even that he decided it was over between us. So I invited her to meet me for coffee at Shari's. I am from Oregon and Shari's is like Denny's, but better. I loved that place, but it has changed since I lived there. I guess that is what happens when you move away, things change.

So my journal entry starts here:

When I went to talk to S I was going with an open mind and heart. I got there early (I am naturally a nervous creature) and I started to panic. I mean, what was I doing? What in the world was I going to say to her? Then I started reasoning with myself, "I am going to make things right." I was terrified of what S might say. Then I was comforted by the fact that she was on time. We had a great conversation and we talked about everything. I found myself thinking I am glad it was her. I realized that I wasn't losing him, but that I was gaining a friend in both of them. (Here is some personal reflection about my state of mind at the time. I am going to share it with you because it shows how much I have grown. But it is difficult for me to see how broken I truly was. This part requires no comment. It is merely reflection.) I realized that I was no longer waiting for him to realize that I was nothing and leave. Also I realized what I am. Maybe I can begin to face myself and my mother. I am kind. I am wanted. I am glad I got to meet her. I am happy he found her.(Eleven years later I am still friends with S and I haven't seen him in ten years.)

After our meeting over coffee and conversation I gave S a ride home. When I went up to hang out with her a bit more I met the most important person in my life. He was sitting on their old beat up couch watching a marathon of the Godfather. He stood up when I walked in to say hello. He was wearing an old pair of blue jeans. I remember his blue eyes, blond hair, he was skinny and tall. I remember him, that sweet kid who got nervous when I was around. I think maybe he was the only person who was more nervous then me. The truth is he was only nervous because of me. I was never a nervous wreck around him. Not once. I was at peace when I was around him. This is an important fact that I didn't realize until almost a year after that first meeting.

Now that I look back on our chance meeting I can tell you that I believe in fate and destiny. I tried to fight it, and tried to make it take me down a very different road. Now that I am standing on this side I know I never had a chance. I am glad I lost some of those early battles because I love the life that boy and I have made together. I am looking forward to all the great adventures that are still to come.

Moral of the story is, love finds you when you are not expecting it. Also, I met my husband eleven years ago today, or maybe this week... Okay sometime this month, eleven years ago.

I hope your week is filled with sweet reflection, love, and laughter.

Garden news. . . October 6

So for our weekly garden update I have lots of pictures. Some of them good, some of them okay, and maybe a few that are not. Believe it or not I am not posting all of the pictures that I took of the garden this week. I went a little crazy with all of the baby squash that we have growing. It is exciting to see something growing that we will be able to really eat and maybe we will have enough to freeze some for later meals. I hope you don't mind my excitement. We may not, will not retire here so it is encouraging to grow something in the mist of the worst drought in history, and in clay soil with nothing living in it except for ants. I have also noticed bees flying around and landing on flowers in the garden. I did not take pictures of that yet. It is nice to see the yard slowly transform from the barren landscape we bought to a garden. We still have a lot of work ahead of use in the three years we are for sure going to be here. So I hope you can join us on this journey, and that you might be encouraged to plant a vegetable garden of your own. If we can do it here, so can you where ever you are.Now for the pictures of the garden.

First up is the boys' garden bed.

 Peppers

 I spy a carrot top.

 Radishes popping up

 Jelly bean Tomato

 More radishes they are happy little plants

 Green beens I think.

 Here is a picture of their whole bed. A lot has grown since this picture.

 Now to the squash. I just love this picture.

 This is all from one plant!

 Even with so many squash growing I still love little baby squash

 Almost as much as these big squash. I might start picking them next week or so.

 Zucchini. You are lucky that I didn't post more then this picture of these lovely plants!

 Our melon patch has flowers, I hope that they will fruit for us too.

 They are creeping out into the path

 This is a female flower. The only flower that has the potential to fruit. I hope that is a baby melon.

 We had a storm roll through here and we lost one melon plant.

 We have two grapes growing on this arbor. This grape is happy, the other one is growing slower.

 This crack is in the middle of our yard. We have a lot of them hidden by the grass. It is from the drought, the deeper clay dries out and causes the ground to open up. All we can do is water, water, water. We found on next to the house. So our water bill will be going up. So we will be praying that it works. Praying for this drought to end. Praying for rain. I guess the frogs that live in these cracks are happy where they are. I would find them new homes.

 Remember the stick in the ground I claimed was a fig. Well this year it has grown branches and a few inches taller. When our grass isn't mowed for a couple of weeks it is taller then this poor tree.

 Bleeding heart amaranth and pie pumpkin plants

 Another sad looking tree, The Persimmon. Around we are growing onions. We did get on persimmon off of the tree this year. The boys shared it and loved it. You can see the vegetable garden behind the little fence. That squash looks nice from here too.

 This is a Pomegranate tree. It has grown but with the drought everything is slowly growing.

 We put this orange tree on a drip system and it just started to grow. It is still small but it is happy. After we got the snow last winter we thought it might not make it.

 This is some kind of winter squash. I let you know more when I know more. They are pretty.

 Pumpkin plant.

 Rob planted two new baby fig trees.

Now all we can do is fawn over them and water and hope.

We also planted the Gogi berry outside and it seems to be doing okay. I didn't feature our pear trees. This winter Rob is going to take out our Bartlett Pear because the fire blight is in the lower branches. It can't be saved. Really the only reason it is still there is because I wanted to give it a chance and I thought it had survived the attack. I am a hopeful soul and I always try to think of the best of everything. Also I can be a little looney and I didn't want to kill the tree. I wanted it to grow. We ordered a mulberry tree which will becoming in December, we are planning to plant another persimmon, a couple of lemon trees, and pomegranate in a hedge row along our fence line. We also want to add a nice deck where our patio is now, and more importantly a sprinkler/water system. We have big dreams and plans. We are going to try to do as much as we can before we have to sell the house. Like I said before we are guaranteed to be here another three years and we could end up here longer then that. It all depends on what the Air Force decides for us. For now this is home.

I hope that your week is filled with lovely fall colors or bright yellow squash flowers, and as always Love, and Laughter. Be well my friends

It's a pirate life. . .

Having boys is like being on a pirate ship, there is always an adventure to be had, fighting, screaming, weird songs, and most of the time a buried treasure. So when homeschool became a chore and Captain Damian no beard would cry and fight and poke out his own eye to wear an eye patch I decided it was time for a break. Then I had a brilliant idea (sometimes I do that. it is rare but it happens.) Pirate Week which turned into two weeks of my kind of learning. Damian was excited to do his lessons every morning, he was more then happy to read all of those seafaring adventures that you find in Classic literature. For awhile the peace was kept among all of the crew. It all started with an email from http://www.currclick.com/ and it had pirate unit studies and as soon as I saw that email I knew what to do. I ordered two unit studies one for both boys.

This is what homeschooling looks like around my house.

Damian working on his unit study. Cutting out, coloring, and answering questions based on his book.

 This is James matching capital letter pirates to their lower case letter parrots.

 These two buccaneers know how to work together.

 My only complaint about the preschool unit study I have is that it focused on counting. Only one letter activity, and a million number activities.

 James filled in the blanks to complete the number line.

 With a little help from his brother.

 This is what Damian's finished lapbook looked like.

 As you can imagine he is very proud of it.

I only wish he had colored the pictures in but it was his decision.

Yesterday we started back with the old curriculum and it wasn't fun. It was work. More importantly Damian regular "school" work is an online curriculum. I missed seeing him being excited about doing his school work, and willing to read classic stories. Most of the time I feel very seperate from his online schooling, really I just check to see what he has done, and how he did. So I downloaded another unit study or two. We are starting Charlie and the Chocolate factory by Roald Dahl which is set up as notebooking. Twenty chapters, twenty lessons in twenty days. I will let you know how I like notebooking when we finish.  James is going back to learning a letter every week or two. This week he starts C. He is making a letter book one page at a time. I do love homeschooling! Now to get Damian to practise piano.

I hope your week is filled with happy learning, love and laughter!

Lessons Learned 2 October, 2011

Lessons Learned
2 October 2011

My top five google searches this week all involved Tree Identification based on leaves, bark, and fruit.

I spent the whole week rereading my science book for my midterm. I got an 84 because I second guessed my self out of the right answer.  Really if my teacher looks at my test I might get an 88. One fill in the blank question was really close.

I lost 2 pounds by osmosis this week. I only hope I can continue all the down to 153 by the end of the year. That is five more pounds to make a total weight loss of 20 pounds this year. If I could lose more so that I can zip my wedding dress up by our anniversary I would be very pleased. One can dream.

Today my family started RCIA, we are converting to Catholicism. Today's lesson was God The Father. The first part of the holy trinity. I really like how they explained Creation vs Evolution either way it starts with the Father.

Earlier in the week I was watering some of our plants and I randomly started thinking about how I should pray for a storm that will filled the cracks in the earth, and quince the the thirst of the land. It is Texas, south Texas so the sky was blue and clear and it was hot 95 degrees. Round about 6 o'clock dark clouds rolled in. It stormed. The wind blew everything across the yard, and I rushed out to save the lawn mower, and rototiller from the rain. I thought I might be lifted up off the ground and land in the cow pasture behind us. Really I felt like God said, "I heard you."

Every drop of rain is a beautiful commodity. In order to break the drought we need 15-28 inches of rain.

This drought might last until 2020!

I want to move, no I want to stay until I finish school. No, really I want to move north, Then again we bough the house and I love it. I have no say in anything! We are staying for at least three more years maybe more. All we can do is wait and see. All I do is ask my husband if he can make things happen. He basically gives me a verbal pat on the head. "Silly woman. I have no say either."

 Right now we have squash growing. Really growing. I can almost taste the fresh squash sauteed in butter. This is the first time since we've moved here that we thought we would get to eat something that we grew!

Right today I realized that there are 83 days until Christmas! Eek! Santa is not ready this year. I am making a list, checking twelve hundred times, and hopefully I will start shopping soon.

I hope that the Autumn brings you brisk breezes, pumpkins, apple cider, hot chocolate, and that all your days are filled with love and laughter. Be well my friends.