Note to self: easy menu!

We had the pleasure of hosting a really nice family for brunch today, John & Jackie G with their kids Allie (6th grade) and Zach (3rd). John & Jackie were really fun to talk with. The kids were super, very patient with all the adult nattering, good eaters, and very good-natured. Allie helped me with some of the preparations, Zach initiated a little hoops shooting after lunch, and they both seriously and persistently participated in a toad hunt. It turns out we have an even dozen toads in our house, but they're not particularly noticeable. With time and only a little help finding the last one, they were able to spot every one!

In addition to the great company, this brunch was enjoyable for me because it was relatively simple to prepare and yummy to boot. So I make this note to myself; this could become standard brunch fare at our house! Here's the menu:

Luxury Scrambled Eggs
Maple-Oatmeal Scones
Fruit cup (honeydew, cantaloupe, seedless grapes)
Bacon (extra thick Oscar Mayer and Louis Rich turkey)
OJ
Coffee

That's it!

Prep

The night before

• Set the table
• Run a load of dishes and get them put away
• Put some Pellegrino in the fridge
• Set up the coffee maker with water & coffee grounds & set it to come on at 1:00
  

Eggs

• chop the herbs and scallions
• combine the eggs, cream cheese, salt & pepper
• I held off putting the herbs into the eggs until I could ask whether the kids would eat them. They did, and seemed to like it!

Scones

• Prepared them up to the point of rolling them out & cutting them.
  
• Put them in an airtight container with parchment sheets between layers.
• Made the glaze; left on the counter so it would spread easily when needed.

Bacon

• Cooked both types of bacon, just a little shy of being done
• Cooled, stored in a plastic bag overnight

That day

I came home a few minutes early (just left church with a bare minimum of socializing) while Todd stayed after and rode home with our guests. That gave me time to:

• egg-wash the scones and put them in the oven
• add the egg wash to the prepared eggs
  
• pull the OJ out of the freezer, open it, up-end it in the pitcher
• put the bacon on a platter for reheating in the microwave
• get the fruit out of the fridge, use a melon baller on the melons
• last, cook the eggs
  

Allie then helped me by:

• adding water to the OJ and stirring diligently till the frozen concentrate was thoroughly mixed in (I love making the OJ at the last minute like this. You get cold OJ without having it take up room in the fridge)
• putting washed grapes in the fruit cut
• drizzling the glaze on the scones

It was a yummy meal, if I do say so myself, and I was so relaxed and able to the interact with everyone. So, I record this menu because I want to remember to do it again!

So you want to go to India!

For the past several months, I’ve been “on call,” waiting to hear that India has approved the adoption of my soon-to-be niece, Hope Aradhana. When she gets The Call, Nanette will spin into action, making plane and hotel reservations for approximately two weeks later. It’s good we have more than two weeks to plan for this trip, though, because there are an amazing number of details that need to be managed before going to India, not least of which is to apply for (and hopefully receive) a visa. I thought it might be helpful to blog all the details, for my own future use if I ever return, or for others who might be contemplating going. What to do in preparation? What to bring? What to wear? Here’s what I’ve learned.

First order of business: get your visa! This assumes, of course, that you already have a passport. If not, then get your passport! moves to the top of the list. To apply for a visa to go to India, you will need:

• Application form for visa, completed.


• The appropriate fee (at this writing, $60) in a cashier’s check.


• Your original passport, which must be valid for a minimum of six months beyond the date of intended departure from India


• An extra passport-sized photo pasted on the application. By the way, you don’t need to go to any special place to get this photo. I printed one in the appropriate size from a nice head shot I had of myself.

If you cannot hand-carry these items to an Indian Consulate office, you can mail them. Of course, you will want to send them by certified or express mail, and you will need to include appropriate postage to get them returned the same way. Consult the Indian Consulate website for details. There actually appear to be several Indian Consulates throughout the US; we used the one in NYC. Its website has all the information you need to get your visa. It also can direct you to the other Consulates. Look for their Where To Apply For Consular Services page.
If all this seems to be too hard, search for “India visa” on the web. You’ll find many services that will help you for a fee. I haven’t done that, so I can’t recommend any.

Ok, now you have your visa. Now what?

Next, you want to find a good travel book, which will orient you to the vast complexity that is India. Over 1 billion people as of 2001, compared to just under 300 million for the US. The population of New Delhi is 13.8 million. The largest city in the US, New York City, is around 8 million. It’s home to hundreds of religions and sects, close to 100 different languages. It’s a wiiiiiiiild and crazy place!

Some practical things you’ll want to consider, traveling to India from the US (sorry, that’s the only perspective I can offer):

The electricity is 240v, so you’ll need not only an adapter but a step-down converter if you want to use any of your electronics.They come in a variety of wattages (I say this as if I have a clue what I’m talking about!), so you’ll want to know what appliances you’ll be bringing and what wattage they require. For instance, some hairdryers can pull as much as 1800 watts (more?), so you’ll need a converter that can handle high wattage and also lower wattage for a travel clock radio or an electric shaver.

I found a great converter kit with a set of adapters on Ebay for a total cost of just under $20 including shipping.It can manage 50W to 1600W. That about does it for me! Of course, I haven’t used it, yet, so we’ll soon see if it was a bargain. See an example here.

The flight to India is long, usually with at least one stopover. You might want to consider bringing some snacks with you. In recent years, I’ve found the sound of the engines become very wearying on long flights. This trip, I’ve purchased some excellent headphones and an adapter that will let them fit into the funny little two-pronged outlets in planes, in hopes of finding something to listen to that will engage my hearing without wearying it. The headphones also fit comfortably and closely on the ears (called “closed-design”) and have a noise-cancelling option (requires batteries), so perhaps for once I will be able to watch a movie on a plane without the need for using one or both hands to press the earphones to my ears!

If you’re thinking about shopping in India, then be sure you travel very lightly unless you want to ship some items home. Many airlines only permit 50 pounds per bag now, with a 2-bag limit.

For women, you might want to consider bringing only one or two changes of clothes appropriate to the time of year you’re there. Tailors in India purportedly will take your measurements one day and have the items sent to your hotel for you the next day. You may be more comfortable wearing the sort of clothing Indians customarily wear. If you’re not up for a tummy-baring sari, the pajama-like Punjabi suit might do.

... to be continued ...

Fun tests!!

Your Personality Profile

You are happy, driven, and status conscious. You want everyone to know how successful you are. Very logical, you see life as a game of strategy. A bit of a loner, you prefer to depend on yourself. You always keep your cool and your composure. You are a born leader and business person.

Take The World's Shortest Personality Test

Your Haloween Costume Should Be

A Bumble Bee

What Should You Be For Halloween?

Your Brain's Pattern

You have a tempered, reasonable way of thinking. You tend to take every new idea in, and meld it with your world view. For you, everything is always changing. Each moment is different. Your thinking process tends to be very natural - with no beginnings or endings.

What Pattern Is Your Brain?

Think Pesto

I chopped my basil plants basically to the ground today. I have more basil than I know what to do with! Four big vases full, plus one giant bowl that will be made into pesto shortly.




Fresh basil goes for $14.99 a pount around here. I wonder how many pounds this is? Probably one or two. It takes a lot of basil to weigh a pound.

Note to self

I'm mostly posting these pics as an aid to my own memory. In the spring when the soil is bare and the plants are just sending up their first leaves, it's hard to remember what the perennials looked like versus weeds! And I have some new plants this year, so I'm posting detail photos to help me remember their leaves.

I removed the eupatorium and moved a few strands of helopsis into its spot, which shows as a big blank spot over on the right side of the garden in the second picture. There's still room for something to its left. That spot hasn't been very good for plants so far. I had a baptisia that died there, then some white phlox that also died. I've replaced the soil and maybe should try something really tough like wild daisies. Not sure.



The liatris are almost unnoticeable in front of the bee balm. Consider moving them.
















The cleome were a late-season standout! Although they're annuals, they'll come back because they self-seed prolifically. This is what their leaves look like.











The foxgloves bloomed this year, so next year they'll only put up foliage from the seeds. Here's a shot of their foliage. They can stay in this spot this summer, but for the following summer they need to be further forward and close together so they can be seen.








Divide stella d'oros in late summer,

Consider buddleia for bare spot.

Stake catmint, pink phlox, chives, poppies. Wild daisies?

I transplanted this poppy a couple of years ago, and it gave me two blooms this year. Can't wait to see what it will do next year! Here we see it surrounded by wild daisy plants.










Directly to left of the white phlox are some rudbeckia from the church, planted just yesterday. Their leaves look a little like violets when they first emerge.


If iris don't produce this year, consider removing them






I'm not sure what I think of these grasses. Maybe transplant them to the meadow?














The wild yarrow is pretty nondescript at this time of the year, but it blooms at a time in later summer when there's not much else going on. I have some white yarrow in front of the white phlox, and I tried to transplant some of the brilliant pink that had sprung up in the meadow, just behind it. Not sure if it will survive.

I love the way it kind of weaves around whatever else it's near. It's not much of a fighter, so I have to be on guard against marauding bee balm, which does try to take over all nearby territory!

A. W. Tozer rocks!

Steps To Personal Revival

1) Get thoroughly dissatisfied with yourself. Complacency is the deadly enemy of spiritual progress. The contented soul is a stagnant soul. When speaking of earthly goods Paul could say, "I have learned to be content"; but when referring to his spiritual life he testified, "I press on toward the goal." "So stir up the gift of God that is in thee."

2) Set your face like a flint toward a sweeping transformation of your life. Timid experiments are tagged for failure before they start. We must throw our whole soul into our desire for God. "The kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it."

3) Put yourself in the way of blessing. It's a mistake to expect God's help to come as a windfall apart from conditions known and met. There are plainly marked paths which lead straight to the green pastures; let us walk in them. To desire revival, for instance, and at the same time to neglect prayer and devotion, is to wish one way and walk another.

4) Do a thorough job of repenting. Hasty repentance means a shallow spiritual experience and lack of certainty in the whole life. Let godly sorrow do her healing work. Until we allow the consciousness of sin to wound us, we will never develop a fear of evil. It is our wretched habit of tolerating sin that keeps us in our half-dead condition.

5) Make restitution wherever possible. If you owe a debt pay it, or at least have a frank understanding with your creditor about your intention to pay, so your honesty will be above question. If you have quarreled with anyone, go as far as you can in an effort to achieve reconciliation. As fully as possible, make the crooked things straight.

6) Bring your life into accord with the Sermon on the Mount and other such New Testament Scriptures as are designed to instruct us in the way of righteousness. An honest man with an open Bible and a pad and pencil is sure to find out what's wrong with him quickly. I recommend that the self-examination be made on our knees rising to obey God's commandments as they are revealed to us from the Word. There is nothing romantic or colorful about this plain, downright way of dealing with ourselves, but it gets the work done. Isaac's workmen did not look like heroic figures as they digged in the valley, but they got the wells open, and that was what they had set out to do.

7) Be serious-minded. You can well afford to see fewer comedy shows on TV. Unless you break away from the funny boys, every spiritual impression will continue to be lost to your heart, and that right in your own living room. The people of the world used to go to the movies to escape serious thinking about God and religion. You would not join them there, but you now enjoy spiritual communion with them in your own home. The devil's ideals, moral standards, and mental attitudes are being accepted by you without your knowing it. And you wonder why you can make no progress in your Christian life. There must be a radical change in your habits, or there will not be any permanent improvement in your interior life.

8) Deliberately narrow your interests. The jack-of-all-trades is the master of none. The Christian life requires that we be specialists. Too many projects use up time and energy without bringing us nearer to God.

If you will narrow your interests, God will enlarge your heart. "Jesus only" seems to the unconverted man to be the motto of death, but a great company of happy men and women can testify that it became to them a way into a world infinitely wider and richer than anything they had ever known before. Christ is the essence of all wisdom, beauty and virtue. To know Him in growing intimacy is to increase in appreciation of all things good and beautiful. The mansions of the heart will become larger when the doors are thrown open to Christ and closed against the world and sin. Try it.

9) Begin to witness. Find something to do for God, and your fellow men. Refuse to rust out. Make yourself available to your pastor and do anything you are asked to do. Do not insist upon a position of leadership. Learn to obey. Take the low place until God sees fit to set you in a higher one. Back your new intentions with your money and your gifts, such as they are.

10) Have faith in God. Begin to expect. Look up toward the throne where your Advocate sits at the right hand of God. All heaven is on your side. God will not disappoint you.

If you will follow these suggestions you will most surely experience revival in your own heart. And who can tell how far it may spread? God knows how desperately the church needs a spiritual resurrection. And it can only come through the revived individual.
-A. W. Tozer, "The Size of The Soul"

Two times two = ...

Two-year-old twins! Happy birthday Jae & Jo!!

Late green beans

Here we are in late September, getting more pickings of green beans! Believe it or not, we're even still getting beans off our bush beans (on the right). The pole beans are of course more prolific later in the season. I'm just pleased to still have fresh beans at all!

Time to fire up the blancher and put another bag of beans in the freezer for T's lunches this winter ... :o)

$3 gas update

Gas prices have fallen; have you noticed?  And yours truly was able to nurse the two-week-old tank of gas along until they did.  Yes, I am still a $3-per-gallon virgin.  :o)  I filled up today at $2.989.  Much to my chagrin, I later saw $2.939 … in Hanover, of all places, which is usually the priciest town in the area!

Skunked and loving it

Lately, we've noticed little divots in our yard, as if miniature woodland creatures had been struggling with their tiny 7 irons in our fairway. T was pretty sure we had a skunk assisting us with maggot removal during the night, much to the detriment of our yard. Sure enough, last night he was doing his shoulder exercises (which involve trapping the end of a huge rubber band in a closed door. The physical therapist recently has been upping the strength of the rubber band. I hope he knows what he's doing, because that door's glass and I don't want to see T smeared up against it or pulled bodily through it!) ... now, where was I? Oh, yeah, so T had his rubber band trapped in the back door and was facing the back yard when Mr. Skunk sauntered into place and began nosing around ... literally. Rooting up maggots with his nose. Through our grass. Leaving divots.

Never one to miss a fauna photo op (hey! you think we should have tried to scare him away? You city person, you!) I ran for the camera, went into the spare bedroom where the vantage point is best and one window already has the screen removed, and carefully cranked the window open, trying to be quiet. Unfortunately, our humid weather had swelled the wood some, so it made a little "pop!" sound. Mr Skunk promptly executes a little hop in place a la Pepe Le Pew (I'm so sure I'm spelling that wrong, correct me somebody please!) and dashes under the deck. Very sad. New camera, a rather gorgeous skunk, and no photo op. Sigh.

An hour later, when T is in bed, I see Mr. Skunk again. The window in the bedroom is already open, so I somewhat nervously tiptoe in to take the pictures, hoping against hope that Mr. Skunk isn't afraid of sudden lights going off near him. In which case, neither T nor I will get any sleep for the stink of it all! But the story has a happy ending. Other than the occasional lifted tail, and maybe one slight warning shot (or was that my nervous imagination?), we all cooperated peacably enough. Luckily for me, Simba didn't figure out what was going on till I was nearly finished. Then he decided to growl at the back door, and I hastily closed the window and snatched him away before he could hurt Mr. Skunk's feelings. And all our nasal cavities.

THE END.

A new obsession

Just start reading Mimi Smartypants. You won't stop. I especially love the image of ... oh, I guess I don't want to type it. Without reading the whole thing, it will sound tawdry. Just go here and search for the word "fundamentalist". No, it's not anti-Christian, it's just downright hilarious!

My Word!!

Much as I love Blogger, using the web-based composing windows is a bit of a challenge. Extra lines get inserted where I don’t want them, font selection is limited unless you edit the HTML, you can’t do nested lists (again, unless you edit the HTML), etc., etc., etc!

So … have you heard about the Blogger for Word add-on? I’m composing this post in Word. When I’m done, I will push the “publish” button and the post will be on my blog. It’s pretty slick! Give it a try and let me know what you think!

P.S. I just tested using Word to create a nested list. No luck. So I guess I’ll still be hand-editing those lists!

Bimbos?????

T is leaving Friday for a conference in San Francisco. He’ll be gone 10 days, swinging by Phoenix on the way home to visit his sisters. I love this man. He’s so into his family. It’s great.

A female colleague and friend of his who is not attending the conference passed on to him an invitation for an all expenses paid evening at a club called Bimbo’s 365.

His response (via email): I don’t think Pat would approve of my going to an establishment with the word “bimbo” in its name.

Her droll reply: She’s such a drag.

Perfect!

Seriously, I told him I wouldn't mind if he went, since it appears to be just a night club. As it turns out, he has another expenses-paid event that night. These conferences are such boondoggles. But double seriously, folks, who on earth invites a businesswoman (never mind a man!), especially one you barely know, to a club with a name like that? Would you invite a business colleague to Hooters? Come on!

So I did a little research, and found it’s not so bad. Check out the background for the organization. Ok, Ok, I guess it’s legit. Mostly.

$3 gas?? Naaaah!

I am pleased to report that I have yet to pay $3 for gas. On Thursday, September 1, just after Katrina hit, I filled my gas tank with gas that had already crept up to $2.79. Since then, I've been a miser. We drove to Jaffrey, NH and back over Labor Day weekend, crawling along at 55mph and watching the rest of the world fly past us in the left lane. Actually, that's not totally true ... there were a few fellow gas savers on the road. Some of them barely passed us going 60 or so.

Since returning, I've taken absolutely no road trips unless I had an appointment somewhere. When I did have an appointment, I made sure to optimize my route so I could do all my errands with no backtracking, no extra miles. My gas tank is nearly empty, but I haven't had to fill it yet, and the price of gas is dropping!

With careful driving, I can get 450 miles out of our 16-gallon gas tank.

Yes, I'm a cheapskate, but more than that, I really believe in conserving gas. Our next car will be a hybrid or some similar gas-saving technology ... and it's not this gas crisis that is impelling us to say that. I told the salesman who sold us our current Subaru in 2001, Alfie, that our next car would be a hybrid, and I hoped it would be a Subaru hybrid, but our brand loyalty was not so strong that we would buy a Subaru if they didn't make hybrids when it came time to buy. We intend to buy an all-wheel-drive hybrid, and hopefully not an SUV but a truly conservative car.

I will say, though, that these gas prices have led Todd to consider whether he should be driving something to work that gets better gas mileage than his 1979 Ford F150!

Chatty twins

Pam and Patty happily chatting with a friend during the Labor Day Family Weekend at Monadnock Bible Conference.

It was a nice weekend for all of us. Great to get away from the daily grind for three days (at the unbelievable price of $125 per person, all meals and snacks included!). They're not posh accommodations, but they don't need to be. Todd's family has been doing this since he was 10. That's a lot of years!

It gave me the time to start reading A.W. Tozer's The Size of the Soul. Highly recommend it! It's a collection of his editorials from his stint as the editor of his denominational magazine, so each chapter is about the same number of words (I haven't counted, but they're about 3 pages long) and so packed with stuff to think about it. I give it the highest compliment by saying this isn't a book you would read quickly. One or two chapters make you want to stop and digest what you've read. Awesome.