Last weekend we made the drive back to my hometown to watch my niece, Ashley, graduate from high school. As you might guess from that statement, my older siblings are quite a bit older than me. In fact, the age difference between me and my sister (Ashley’s mom) is the same as that between me and Ashley: 9 1/2 years. Ashley is probably the closest thing I have to a little sister. We spent a lot of time together during her pre-school years when my mom babysat her. I love all my nieces and nephews, of course, but circumstances have placed Ashley and I together more often than the others.
Here we are in 2002 during Li’l Sibs Weekend at Cedarville University. I was a freshman and Ashley was in 4th grade. We had a lot of fun that weekend, hanging out and making memories.
Fast-forward to 2006 and here she is as one of my bridesmaids (the middle one) along with my other niece, Jesse (far left).
And here she is all grown up and a high school graduate. The time sure flies. Do we really share some of the same genes?
Waiting to get her diploma in the very hot gymnasium
Posing with her grandparents (my parents) after the ceremony. They weren’t ready for the lens to snap, but I like how this one turned out anyway.
Graduation was actually the last event of the weekend. On our way into town, we stopped to visit with my Great Aunt Ruth, who recently moved into a nursing home. At 97, it’s amazing that she’s just now making that move! She had been living by herself for the last 30 years or so. We found her quite changed, but there were still glimpses of the old Aunt Ruth I have loved for so long. In many ways, Aunt Ruth has been like a second grandma on my dad’s side of the family. To me, and many of my cousins. She never married and her sisters and many, many nieces and nephews have been her primary focus. I can hear her laugh in my head as clearly as if she were sitting next to me. Oh, how she loves to laugh and bring smiles to the faces around her. Her health is failing now, and I don’t know how much longer she’ll be with us. I’m so glad we got to stop in and bring a smile to her face.
As circumstance would have it, another great aunt, Ruth’s sister, Evelyn, was two doors down in the same home. Aunt Evelyn is just there temporarily, recovering from a fall, and it was good to see her as well. It had been probably about 4 years since we’d last seen each other, and she’s still very much the same lovely Aunt Evelyn I’ve always known.
We also got to hang out for a bit with my brother and sister-in-law and briefly see their two kids, attend the church in which I grew up, spend some relaxing time with my parents, and hang out with my best friend’s younger brother and two golden retrievers. Before the trip, I was a little anxious about how some of the details and dynamics would work out, but it was an all-around great visit.
(Posted on June 3, 2010 via backdating)
Continuing to play catch up…
Cincinnati Flower and Garden Show
In mid-April, I went to my second Cincinnati Flower and Garden Show. The event is inspirational, and I find that I learn about more plants and new design ideas, and color, texture, and height combinations. I especially look for ideas for hanging baskets and containers. Our yard is small and therefore provides many challenging design considerations, calling for some extra creativity.
Here are some of the displays I particularly liked (click a thumbnail for a larger version):
You can see more photos in my Facebook album.
This year I heard a talk on container gardening by a local gardening expert/celebrity, Ron Wilson. I love talking plants, but don’t have many people who share my energy for the topic so it was lovely to be surrounded by other horticultural hobbyists.
Spring Pottery Fair
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been to the annual Spring Pottery Fair — but at least four times. This year’s fair was on May 1st. It’s always a good time, even when I just go by myself. Last year I decided I would start a collection of mugs made by local artists, and I bought these beauties made by J. Will:
This year I came away with these two lovelies from artist Dennis Allen, who specializes in wood-fired stoneware:
An Ideal Husband
On May 8th, two girlfriends and I went to see Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company. I have long been a fan of the movie version, and enjoy this play more than more widely popular The Importance of Being Earnest. It was a great rendition, and Lord Goring in particular was brilliantly portrayed.
We went out to dinner beforehand at It’s Just Crepes on Court Street, and had some fun taking pictures:
Trying to get a good mirror shot
Got it!
Mmm… dessert crepe…
(Posted on June 1, 2010 via backdating)
I’m a sucker for bread. Quick breads, yeast breads, savory breads, sweet breads—I like them all.
(I have a particular fondness for the parts of Wives and Daughters where Molly Gibson talks of eating bread and cheese for dinner.)
The following is my current favorite zucchini bread recipe. It’s a little unusual, and I admit, I do add cinnamon because it’s inconceivable to me that one could think of making zucchini bread without cinnamon. I mean, c’mon.
Whole Wheat Zucchini Bread
(from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking)
Yield: One 9×5-inch loaf
Baking temperature: 350°F
Baking time: 1 hour to 1 1/4 hours
This classic is made all the better because the moisture from the grated zucchini softens the bran in the whole wheat, resulting in an eminently appetizing quick bread. We’ve used a bit of lemon zest and a smidgen of nutmeg to show off the zucchini, and when made with white whole wheat flour, the bread is a beautiful light golden color.
2 cups whole wheat flour, traditional or white whole wheat
1 cup unbleached bread flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 large eggs
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil (sometimes I substitute unsweetened applesauce)
1 1/2 cups shredded zucchini
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1 tablespoon grated lemon zest
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9×5-inch loaf pan.
Whisk together the flours, sugar, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg in a large bowl. Whisk the eggs, milk, and oil in a small bowl or large mixing cup. Stir into the dry ingredients until everything is evenly moistened; stir in zucchini, raisins, walnuts, and lemon zest.
Pour batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 1 hour. Check the top; if it’s wet looking and wobbles when you touch it, tent the bread loosely with foil and bake until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean, 10 to 15 minutes more.
Remove the bread from the oven and cool in the pan for 15 minutes before taking it out of the pan and putting it on a rack to finish cooling completely.
During the last two weeks I’ve been privileged to spend quality time with two dear friends whom I don’t see often enough mostly due to geographic constraints.
Firstly, my sister-in-law, Karen (formerly of Boston, recently of San Jose), came to stay with us for about 24 hours.
Karen officially joined our family when she married Jeff’s oldest brother, Doug, in 2007. It has been a joy getting to know her these past few years, and wonderful to spend some extensive 1-on-1 and 2-on-1 time with her during this visit. During her time with us we took the dogs on a neighborhood walk, enjoyed eating Yagööt frozen yogurt, watched a video/slideshow of Karen’s recent trip to Australia, went thrift store shopping, enjoyed food and ambiance at Melt (my favorite restaurant), and talked lots and lots about food, family, dogs, life, and God’s plans. Thanks so much for making the special trip down to see us, Karen!
Secondly, I drove up to see a college friend, Kristin (primarily of Philadelphia, presently and semi-temporarily of Chicago), for two days at the beginning of this week.
Windblown on the shore of Lake Michigan
Kristin and I met our freshman year of college when we lived in the same hall (and continued to be hall-mates during the following two years as well) and quickly discovered a shared love of The Lord of the Rings and all things Tolkien, among other things.
It was wonderful to catch up on life, talk extensively about all manner of things, and laugh and cry together. (We are both movie criers, so of course we had to watch bits and pieces of Return of the King and share the kleenex.) When I first arrived in Chicago, I ended up going straight to the home of some other college friends, Matt and Brandi, where I met up with Kristin and two more college friends, Josh and Cindy. We had a little mini-reunion while eating delicious French food in celebration of Matt and Brandi’s recent sojourn across France.
The next day we made our way downtown (and I finally got to ride the L!) to take advantage of a free day at the Museum of Science and Industry. While at the museum, we toured the U-505 Submarine, the only German U-boat in the U.S., captured during WWII. It was beyond cool!
A grainy, slightly blurry picture of us with U-505
Kri made us a wonderfully delicious red pepper risotto for dinner that night, and we fell asleep in the middle of Ponyo, partially due to the blissful, though sleep-inducing, risotto coma we were in. We finished the movie in the morning (ahh, the joys of vacation!) and eventually made our way over to the beach for a relaxing afternoon.
To get to the lake, we walked through a tunnel with gorgeous mosaics (the first one is my favorite):
Then we enjoyed the view for awhile:
Kristin explained to me how the ocean feels different from Lake Michigan, as I’ve always heard people from the coasts say it’s not the same, but have never understood how or why. Now I get it, but I still love the lake. We grabbed paninis and chai at a local coffee shop before I had to head back home.
I grew up in the shadow of Chicago, so to speak, and I always love visiting the city.
from ‘Chicago’ by Carl Sandburg
Thank you, dear friend, for inviting me up to stay with you and opening your heart to me. I am so thankful that our friendship has continued on from those first four years and now through these last five.
It’s hard to believe it’s been over two weeks since my last post. Life has been busy as of late with family staying over, visiting an out-of-town friend, house projects, and some fun local events. More on all that later.
In the meantime, here’s my favorite cookie recipe that I’ve been making a lot of lately. It comes from the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking cookbook. It’s also gluten free by some standards (it does include oats).
Nutty for Oats Cookies
Baking temperature: 350°F
Baking time: 11 to 13 minutes
Peanut butter cookies. Oatmeal cookies. Chocolate chip cookies. Put ’em together, and what do you have? This chewy, peanutty, chocolate chip-laden cookie, made with two kinds of oats: rolled and ground.
2/3 cup smooth peanut butter (I use natural)
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick, 2 ounces) unsalted butter
3/4 cup packed light or dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 large eggs
1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats, ground for 30 seconds in a food processor
1 1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
2 cups chocolate chips (Note: I use roughly half this amount as it’s hard to fit that many chips into the cookies)
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease 2 baking sheets or line with parchment paper.
Cream the peanut butter, butter, sugar, vanilla, salt, and baking soda in a medium bowl. Beat in the eggs, scraping the bowl once they’re incorporated, then the ground oats, old-fashioned rolled oats, and chocolate chips. Drop the dough by tablespoonfuls onto the prepared baking sheets.
Bake the cookies, reversing the pans midway through (top to bottom, bottom to top), until they’re barely set and just beginning to brown around the edges, 11 to 13 minutes. Remove the cookies from the oven and let them cool completely on the pans.
Enjoy!
I’ve been feeling a lack of kitchen art for some time and finally just made some myself:
I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. I drew my inspiration mostly from this Etsy listing:
I also recently ran across a bowl at Pier 1 in a similar style with “flour,” “sugar,” “salt,” etc. printed on the side, but I can’t find it on their web site. My original inspiration may have subconsciously come from Katie Bower over at All Bower Power over a year ago. I didn’t have her project specifically in mind when I did my project, but found it again just recently and I know I’d seen it before.
