Tag

Today is the day. I've avoided being "tagged" thus far in my short blogging career, but no longer. Thanks to idnaturegirl for the fabulous opportunity for me to share 7 random things about myself. Enjoy. The one good thing- hopefully you will learn something new and can then qualify for an early bedtime. Good luck!

1) I have an incredible sense of smell and no spacial sense whatsoever.

2) I occasionally have this crazy delusion that I would enjoy building my own house from the ground up. That urge is usually cured (though temporarily) by any given minor home repair project.

3) Despite my English teacher's best efforts, I have found I actually like to write and can be good at it if given enough time and a topic I enjoy.

4) I enjoy being where I am in life. The current economy ( or any economy for that matter) can not afford to pay me enough to go back to junior high school and do the last 25 years over again.

5) I have been putting pureed zucchini in my spaghetti sauce for quite a while now. The kids can't tell, nor is anyone that reads this allowed to tell them because Joseph will probably stop eating all together. Tonight we're having spaghetti (traditional for Halloween at our house) but I'm trying spinach instead. If Joseph dies then I'll know totally green vegetables really are poisonous to him.

6) My favorite part of having children was child birth because I knew pregnancy was almost over. My least favorite part so far (and my oldest is almost 15) is potty training. I will go through a dozen pregnancies before I voluntarily potty train again. (That's just for comparison, I know I can't do the first without plenty of the second.)

7) I have a fantastic memory for completely useless trivial information and anything to do with numbers, but don't ask me to remember what is on my "to-do" list for the day if it's not written down (and sometimes even if it is written down). It's a wonder I get anything done some days.

Ok, so now I get to "tag" 7 other random people. How does one decide these things? I'm letting my family off the hook for this one. Nicci, you are family, but if that baby isn't here by Sunday consider yourself tagged! (Maybe that will work better than stairs and squats to encourage his entrance!) Here are my tags: Jenny B., Kathleen S., Carrie S., Lisa W., Katy G., and Sandy L., and Anna Lee S . Can't wait to see your 7 things!

1 Little, 2 Little, 3 Little Pumpkin Seeds...Yum!

Tonight we are carving our jack-o-lantern and I got to thinking about pumpkin seeds. I remember eating them at school once and thought it was cool you could toast them and make a treat out of them. I was always told to just spread them in a pan, sprinkle on a little salt, and toast them. Thing is, they never tasted very good to me. I'm not one to do a whole lot of cooking without a recipe (in fact, I've been asked on occasion to please not experiment!), so I just gave up the idea of pumpkin seeds as a snack.

Thankfully, there ARE creative people who DO experiment with foods, and other people like the results. One of them was kind enough to submit a couple of recipes to Light & Tasty Magazine a few of years ago. It changed my pumpkin seed life. I now anxiously await them every year. So, in honor of Halloween and this wonderful fall season, I share this recipe with you. I like the original recipe so much, I've never tried the others. You're on your own there.

This may have been more helpful earlier in the week, if you've already done your carving. Sorry. Buy a pumpkin on clearance on Saturday or beg seeds off your neighbor and try it out. Enjoy!


Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
Light & Tasty Magazine Oct/Nov 2006
Prep: 10 Min., Bake:45 min. + cooling

2 cups pumpkin seeds
5 tsp. butter, melted
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1/8-1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper

In a bowl, toss pumpkin seeds with butter and Worcestershire sauce. Combine the sugar, salt, garlic powder, and cayenne; sprinkle over seeds and toss to coat.

Line a 15-in. x 10-in. x 1-in. baking pan with foil; coat the foil with nonstick cooking spray. Spread seeds in pan. Bake at 250 degrees for 45-60 minutes or until the seeds are dry and lightly browned, stirring every 15 minutes. Cool completely. Store in an airtight container.

Nutrition Facts: 1/4 cup equals 95 calories, 5 g fat (2 g saturated fat), 6 mg cholesterol, 181 mg sodium, 9 g carbohydrate, 1 g fiber, 3 g protein. Diabetic Exchanges: 1 fat, 1/2 starch.

Optional Recipes:
1) Sweet- Combine 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon and 1/8 tsp. each ground nutmeg and ground cloves.

2) Savory- Combine 1/2 tsp. each salt and paprika, 1/4 tsp. each onion powder, oregano, and dried thyme, and 1/8 tsp. pepper.

3) BBQ- Toss the seeds with 1 tsp. barbeque seasoning (in the spice section of the grocery store).

4) Mexican- Combine 1/2 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp each onion powder, dried oregano, ground cumin, and chili powder, and 1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper.

Authors, again

I didn't know what I had done with Ryan's story from Pack Meeting when I last posted, but I found it. Yea, me! I figure I can't post one and not the other. So, here goes. Once again, spelling and punctuation are true to the original. Also, each line was written on a different page.

If I hadn't followed that dog...

I would not have gone to the ganck yard and...
I would not have gone to the grave yard and...
I would not have gone to the flower garden and...
I would not have gone to the deep swomp and...
I would not have gone to the swooer in new york sity and...
not have gone to the forest with lions.

Can I just say that I love reading stories the kids make up when they're young. The handwriting, spelling, and pictures (when they have them) are so precious.

Authors in the Making

We had Pack Meeting tonight. The theme was books and as it's Halloween, the boys were to dress up as a character from a book they've read. Steven went as Taran from the Chronicles of Prydain series. As a "keep-'em-busy-until-we-start" activity the kids were given little booklets with a writing prompt on them and then encouraged to finish the story. Steven and another scout (we'll just call him Thomas) decided to write a story together. I thought it was cute, so I thought I'd post it. All spelling and punctuation are true to the original.

Our two authors hard at work

Steven and Thomas' Property

If I'd known what was going to happen, I never would have opened the door.

One day it happened. It was Halloween night. I was walking home and an earthquake! When I got my scences back, I kept walking home. I came upon a creepy old house. I just had to go in. I found a whole bunch of cool stuff. After I sripded the house down I noticed a closet. I noticed it was unlocked. I opened it, and....

To see what happens see book 2.


Shan here- Wow, only 15 minutes of writing and he already has a series! (I promise they have both been taught "Thou shalt not steal". Maybe we should add "or sripded down a house"!) Steven and Thomas stood up and read it outloud to everyone. We were all anxious to hear what happened and then burst out laughing when we were told to wait for book 2. Maybe it was one of those times you just had to be there, but it's a cute memory for me.

Grapes

So, it's Saturday, not too far from Sunday. My grape jelly experiment is finally over. I was never very good at guesstimating anything, so my projects tend to run long and require multiple trips to the store the first time I try something new. Grape jelly was no different. At least this project didn't require something from Home Depot. Allen's Grocery store is a lot closer.

I figured our box of grapes held enough for a couple batches of jelly- that would require about 9 pounds of grapes and give us about a dozen cups of jelly. I bought the appropriate containers and pectin. Thursday after school we started de-stemming grapes. I should have gotten out the scale. Turns out we had nearly 30 pounds (told you I don't guesstimate very well) of grapes. Two days later I have 32 cups of jelly and 7 cups of syrup. (Yea, I know, who eats grape syrup? We will because I was trying a different recipe that didn't use pectin. You just boil the juice and sugar until it's thick enough. After 45 minutes of boiling and stirring, I decided we had enough grape jelly to be getting on with and we'd just go for a little grape syrup instead. I'll let you know how or if it goes. My advice, buy pectin!)

The whole jelly thing was kind of fun. The boys loved helping me squish the grapes. It was strangely therapeutic- like popping the bubbles on a sheet of bubble wrap. Then you boil the grapes and run them through a strainer (Victorio Strainer. For my siblings- it's the same kind we used to use for making applesauce with Mom.) to get rid of the skins and any stems that may have snuck in. That was Steven's favorite part. We ended up with one of those giant silver bowls full of grape juice. You have to let it sit overnight in the fridge because, something new I learned, grape juice will develop tartrate crystals. They look like lots of pulp that just appears in the juice. You can strain them out after the juice has sat overnight. So, grape jelly is at least a 2-day project. We made room in the indoor fridge for the huge bowl because my white counters already had purple blotches all over them and I wasn't about to risk the same with the white carpet as we walked the giant bowl out to the fridge in the garage. I felt very homemake-y for providing such copius amounts of homemade grape products for my family.

Day Two was fun. The recipe said to remove the tartrate crystals by straining the juice through several layers of cheese cloth. This is just a marketing ploy by the cheesecloth people. If you make grape jelly do not use cheese cloth. Many more purple blotches were added to the white counters. (Good thing they come right out with bleach!) There is probably a great product out there for this part of the process, but I don't own it. I ended up just using the little strainer I had in my utensil drawer. I used to use it to sprinkle powdered sugar evenly on brownies. I have a shaker for that now. Now it's pretty much used only once or twice a year to strain pulp out of someone's orange juice. It worked much better and made less of a mess than the cheese cloth. I made a double batch of jelly and felt very pleased with myself.

By Day Three (today) the excitement had pretty much evaporated for that big bowl of grape juice that was staring me in the face every time I opened the fridge. This afternoon I decided to try the no-pectin version mentioned above as I had used all the pectin I had bought and didn't want to go to the store. An hour later I found myself headed to the store to buy more pectin. The last batch went into jars about 7:00 tonight. I am very grateful to have the grape jelly in jars and the big silver bowl clean and back in the cupboard where it belongs. Greg was a total dear and helped do the dishes. It still feels good to have learned something new and have something tangible to show for it. Right now, though, any thought of eating anything grape flavored is pretty repulsive.

So, feel free to stop by for a visit sometime. We'll have peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches for lunch and pancakes with grape syrup for dinner. (I don't know what your mornings are like, but there is no way pancakes will happen most mornings here.) We could even try a little vanilla ice cream with grape syrup for dessert. If you come before Thanksgiving, we'd love to see you, but I'll probably just watch you eat. I know, you can't wait to get here.

The Camera Whisperer

Greg fiddled with the camera when he got home and discovered that if the planets aligned while you held your breath, stood on one foot, closed your eyes half way, held the camera at exactly a 29.7 degree angle, muttered threats to the camera under your breath and gently pushed the button, the camera would take a picture. Just kidding! He did discover that if he put pressure on just the right spot below the lens he could get a picture or two. So, below are a few of the latest at our house.

This is what has been happening when I take a picture.

The sunset this evening when facing west.

The sunset this evening facing east.

Our Fruit Cocktail Tree/Stick. Currently, our stick-in-the-mud. (Ok, bad joke.)

One English diorama. It's a scene from the book Cryptid Hunters where a storage canister, two children, a toy poodle, and a chimpanzee fall out of a cargo plane over the Congo. The children, poodle, and chimp survive by holding onto the netting of the canister. That's about all I know of the book. My favorite part is the airplane flying into the side of the box. Saved making an entire plane!

So, that's it for the pictures for awhile, unless Greg is home to work his magic on the camera or I get it fixed. We'll see which happens first. Now, I'm off to bake the bread and do a few dishes. Happy sleeping!

Happy Day!

I wasn't so sure how today was going to go. But, it has turned out to be one fine day, so I thought I would share.

1) This morning I was wiped out. Not enough sleep for too many days makes Shannon not much fun to be around, or something like that. Being Wednesday, Greg took the three youngest to school on his way to work for chess club. Spencer left for the bus at the same time. Erica had left 1/2 hour before. (Did I mention that I'm really starting to love Wednesdays?!) I waved my fabulous family out the door and went back to bed at 7:43. I've never done that before, but boy did it feel G-R-E-A-T (insert Tony the Tiger here!). I woke up at 9:00 and thought about getting up and then woke up again at 10:00. I didn't do much today and I would not like sleeping all day all the time, but once every 5 blue moons is a wonderful thing.

2) Last April, when we still lived in Mesa and had different health insurance, I took Spencer and Steven to the eye doctor. Mayo is great for a lot of things, but there are gaps in their insurance communication. The optometrist, Jon Wold for those that know him, submitted the claim which was denied. Mayo said to resubmit to a different address, which they did. It, too was denied. By now we'd lived in UT for several months and I had no computer access to Mayo as Greg was no longer an employee. I called Mayo and they resubmitted it, but it was again denied because they said we chose a doctor that was out of network. How could that be when I got the info from their website? No one seemed to know and I couldn't find Dr. Wold listed anywhere on the amount of website I now had access to. The doctors office wouldn't submit the claim again. We finally just gave up and paid the bill.

Fast forward to two days ago. I was deleting old emails (we had almost 2000 of them) when I came across two emails sent to me from the vision insurance people. Lo and behold, it listed Dr. Wold as an in-network provider. I still couldn't link them to Mayo, so I called today. Turns out that the vision insurance in AZ is contracted out by Mayo. When the eye doctor had submitted the claim to Mayo, Mayo hadn't forwarded it to their vision plan. Since the optometrist wasn't listed under the the medical plan they refused to pay. I'm not quite sure why they thought they'd find an optometrist under the medical plan when the medical plan doesn't cover vision. Probably just the communication gap I mentioned before. I spoke to Daryl at the real vision insurers this afternoon. He was fabulous- took my info and said they'd have a check in the mail to me next week. So, I did a little happy dance, because I was now fully rested, and ran out the door to presidency meeting (Daryl's only flaw was that the phone call took longer than I really had time for!) before heading off to school to get the boys. Can't wait for the mail next week!

3) The English diarama is DONE! Woohoo! That would be two days early. Even the paragraph to go with it is finished and taped on the back. It is off my kitchen counter as of tomorrow morning. I'd put in a picture, but the camera is still on the fritz. (That's a project for tomorrow or Friday.) Erica has even finished her Frankenstein portfolio. All we have left are all the goodies for the end of quarter parties and one for Greg at work, any excuse to celebrate and eat junk- and the weekend ahead is looking pretty fine!

4) The Laurels (16-18 year-old girls) decided to have their YW activity last night. We attended the orchestra concert of one of the girls. It also happened to include my daughter so I got a YW activity and a concert attendance all in one shot. That means that tonight I don't have a YW activity. Joseph went grape picking with his friend, Korey, yesterday. I'd never heard of that before, but they came back with the back of the car crammed to the gills with boxes of the sweetest grapes I've ever tasted. So, tonight I'm going to try my hand at homemade grape jelly and make bread for Greg's office party tomorrow. Should be fun.

5) Then I'm going to bed! It'll be less than 12 hours since I got up. Can't remember the last time that happened. My brain will probably be confused, but I'm sure I'll straighten myself out.

Wish all days could go this well. Since they don't, you've got to be grateful when they do. Hope your tomorrow goes as well as my today.