Sunday Hymn Post

After the midnight, morning will greet us;
After the sadness, joy will appear;
After the tempest, sunlight will meet us;
After the jeering, praise we shall hear.

Refrain

After the shadows, there will be sunshine;
After the frown, the soul-cheering smile;
Cling to the Savior, love Him forever;
All will be well in a little while.

After the battle, peace will be given;
After the weeping, song there will be;
After the journey there will be Heaven,
Burdens will fall and we shall be free.

Refrain

Shadows and sunshine all thro’ the story,
Teardrops and pleasure, day after day;
But when we reach the kingdom of glory,
Trials of earth will vanish away.

Refrain

Cyberhymnal

My First Bread With Soaked Flour

,

It turned out pretty well.=)

First, though, I tried soaked oats, and that did NOT turn out well. Bleah. Perhaps I soaked them too long, perhaps my sour raw goat's milk was too sour (but I only used a Tablespoon or two) and we even rinsed the oats before cooking. Not good.

I hate to throw out food, however, so I looked for a bread recipe which could also incorporate the sour oats. I found this one. It looks great. I didn't follow it precisely, though. Here's what I did:

Thursday night we got out a huge bowl and mixed together:

3 1/2 cups warm water
1/2 cup sour raw goat's milk
14 cups of freshly ground flour
the leftover sour oats

This was covered with a towel- in retrospect, saran wrap would have been better, or maybe the lid to the bowl if I could have found it.=)

Then Friday afternoon I moved the dough to my Bosch mixer- some of the flour wasn't really soaked- not a lot of, maybe half to three quarters of a cup.

I added:
2 scant tablespoons of yeast
1/2 cup of molasses
1/2 cup of butter
a tablespoon of sea salt

I let the Bosch do the hard work of mixing the dough.

I took the bowl to the laundry room and set it on the dryer (which had been running and was warm) and let it rise for half an hour. I put it through the Bosch with the bread dough hooks again, and mixed it up once more. Then I turned it out on the counter, divided it into sections and rolled each section up for one of my valtrompia bread tubes. Pip greased the tubes for me, and I slipped the bread dough into them and baked them at 375 for about 35-45 minutes.

They do have a slightly sour taste, but it's a good sour, not like the oats, not overwhelming, not nasty- just a sort of rich, hearty flavor that goes well with the density of the bread.

We've had them with butter, with cream cheese, and I had them with diced tongue mixed with cream cheese spread. We had them with soup, with curried lentils, and with a sausages/potatoes/kale supper.

Yummy. And the loaves age well, too (this made a LOT of bread), as we are still eating them (I made them last Friday week) and still enjoying the flavor. The Dread Pirate Grasshopper has eaten a slice, as well- it's his second grain. He's had some rice, this was his first wheat. He loved it.
I'm going to make some melba toast with the remains of the last loaf and a cheese spread for that.

Next Time: What I probably should have done is dissolved the yeast in half a cup of warm water first, before adding it to the . This worked, and it's pretty good bread, but it is a very dense bread. I will probably give it a little extra rising time next time, too, just to see if that makes it lighter without adding a yeasty flavor.

I might also make one loaf a cinnamon raisin bread, which I don't care for, but it's my husband's favorite.

I am keeping some back to give to The Cherub to see how she does. We introduced her to duck eggs this week, and I didn't want to do two of her three allergens the same week. She's had a fried duck egg for breakfast twice so far, and we have none of the nasty reactions she gets from hen's eggs- so that's exciting. Next spring I'd like to try to get our own ducks out here.
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Have a recipe of your own to share? If it feeds 8 or more, please share it here!

Linked at The Healthy Home Economist Monday Mania

Blessed with Grace, Tempt my Tummy Tuesdays

Linked at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam

Linked also at the wonderful Hearth and Soul bloghop!

October's Book of the Month

"Heroes and heroines are judged to have had their day. The un-teaching of history concentrates on 'themes' rather than personalities. But personality - human nature - is surely the essence of history..."

When I read these words in Robert Lacey's Great Tales from English History: The Truth About King Arthur, Lady Godiva, Richard the Lionheart, and More, I very nearly let out a roaring cheer; it's a good thing I didn't, as I only had the dog in the apartment with me and such a noise would have alarmed the neurotic beastie (did you know that earlier this week she ATE part of my copy of "Democracy in America?" We were not the best of friends that night).

Back to Lacey, though, and his comments on heroes and heroines. As much as I loved getting my history degree, there were always class lectures that left me cringing with their absurdity and repetitiveness. Invariably, a professor would mention how we'd left the age of Great Men studies in history and now (in our enlightened age), historiography dealt with more complex themes like culture, religion, gender, et cetera ad nauseum. No wonder so many young people today don't like history; they no longer know that it's about people and instead are forced to see it through the lens of whatever -ism happens to be trendy when they're in school (actually, for high school, whatever issue was trendy five years ago... judging by what I've seen in high school history studies and what I got from my college lectures, the high school stuff is about five years behind whatever academics consider important).

That is why books like Lacey's are so wonderful: they remind us that the past was populated with personalities, not with positions. It's only our need to classify, sort, and organize that leads to the positions and -isms; useful, yes, and important for seeing the big picture...but the big picture is useless if we don't also understand how people (and ultimately, we ourselves) fit into that picture.

Lacey's book gives us a big picture: a traversing of British history from prehistoric times to the mid-fourteenth-century. Some of his chapters deal with very well known personalities from those periods (William the Conqueror, Lady Godiva, Edward the Confessor); some deal with those that ought to be better known (Canute, Bede, etc.); some with fascinating individuals almost lost to obscurity in the historic urgency of conquests and kingdoms (Elmer the Flying Monk, anyone?).

He's very good with using original sources and, being the type to partially judge a book by its bibliography, I was particularly thrilled with the amount of information he gave his readers, should they be interested in following up on some of the stories. His writing is interesting enough that I can see most readers curious about learning more, always a good thing in a book.

It's not a perfect book (none except the Bible are). For the first half of the book I was absolutely delighted with the way Lacey avoided pontificating on modern political issues and instead stuck to simply telling his tale. Then I got to the chapter on Richard the Lionheart (140 pages into the book) and suddenly found myself in the midst of a bit of opinion on Blair, Iraq, and modern taxation. It's like Lacey woke up one morning, read a news story that left him slightly peeved, and then wrote parts of this chapter to help get that peeved feeling out of his system. Those bits don't fit with the general tone of the book and will seem very, very dated in just a few years.
I'd also urge some previewing if younger readers are considering this book; as much as people might like to talk about the "good old days," people have always been just as perverse, just as violent, and just as odd as they are nowadays.

"As we set out to explore the past, we should keep in mind the first rule of history: the things that we don't know far outnumber the things that we do," Lacey concludes in one of his early chapters, and that makes a fabulous framework for enjoying and learning from this book, and all other history ones. We may know a great deal, but history wouldn't be half the fun if we truly knew everything. It's about a search to know people we can never meet, to see places that no longer exist, to understand events that cannot be revisited, and to always search and hunt for just a little bit more knowledge and understanding. Thanks to Robert Lacey for adding to the pleasure of the history game!

Brazilian Quiche, and a Linky!

"Too often we have not grasped the radical implications of grace for our attitude to mission and the poor. We think we are enacting grace if we work among the poor, if we serve them, if we provide for them. But we are only half way there. It is not really grace. Because we still act from a position of superiority. We give the poor a meal on our soup runs, homeless meals. We do the equivalent in a thousand projects. We think we are serving. How humble we are! But we have missed entirely the dynamic that is going on. What we really proclaim is that we are able and you are unable. I can do something for you, but you can do nothing for me. I am superior to you. We clock our superiority in compassion, but superiority cloaked in compassion is not love. It is paternalism. It is patronising.

Mrs Jones, a participant at a ‘poverty hearing’ organised by Church Action on Poverty said this: ‘In part it is about having no money, but there is more to poverty than that. It is about being isolated, unsupported, uneducated and unwanted. Poor people want to be included and not just judged and ‘rescued’ at times of crisis.’

Think how different the dynamic is when we sit and eat with someone. We meet as equals. We share together. We behave as friends. We affirm one another and enjoy one another."

 When we have people over, as we do at least once a week, usually more, they always ask if they can bring something.  We used to say no, because we have a large family of able cooks, and we wanted to treat others.  Sometimes this is exactly what would bless somebody else.  But most of the time, people like to share, so now we say, "Yes, would you mind bringing dessert?"

There is a special bond created by sharing a meal together, however simple that meal might be.

Come share with us.  Here's one of our recipes:

Brazilian Quiche, from Extending the Table: A World Community Cookbook

Serves 6-10

In a bowl combine an combination of the following to come up with 2 cups of the vegetable mixture for this quiche:
chopped onion
diced tomato
fresh herbs, chopped
mixed frozen vegetables (I wouldn't cook them)
diced steamed butternut squash
diced zucchini
leftover steamed kale

Add:
1 cup of diced or sliced cooked meat

Add salt and pepper to taste, set aside.

In a separate bowl or in your blender combine:
3 eggs
1/2 cup oil, butter, lard or other fat
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup sharp cheese
1 t. salt
1 T. baking powder
2 cups milk

Preheat oven to 350.

Pour half of batter in greased 9X13 baking pan. Spread the meat and vegetable mixture over batter. Pour remaining batter over the top.

Arrange sliced olives on top as garnish. Bake 30-40 minutes or until batter is set.
It will rise as it bakes and fall when removed from oven.

Cookbook says it is denser and sturdier than the more common quiche, and Brazilians eat it as a finger food, snack, and on picnics as well as a main dish.

Now you share one of yours, please.  =)

LInk back here in the body of your post, so others can find us and share in the fun, too. It can be an old post, although it would be nice, if you link to a post from four years back, if you also include a newer message in your blog linking back here so others can share. Thanks!

Mister Linky's Magical Widgets -- Easy-Linky widget will appear right here!
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For best results, use HTML mode to edit this section of the post.

Linked at Tuesdays at the Table

Quotes from My Reading

RE-reading: John Erskine's essay "The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent."
quote:

"...an action can intelligently be called good only if it contributes to a good end; that it is the moral obligation of an intelligent creature to find out as far as possible whether a given action leads to a good or a bad end; and that any system of ethics that excuses him from that obligation is vicious. If I give you poison, meaning to give you wholesome food, I have-to say the least-not done a good act; and unless I intend to throw overboard all pretence to intelligence, I must feel some responsibility for that trifling neglect to find out whether what I gave you was food or poison."

This makes me think of the health care bill, where its signers were so unconcerned about whether the bill was medicine or poison that they couldn't be bothered to even read it- and now that they are fighting for their political lives, some of them defend themselves with "Well, I didn't know what was in it." This is not a defense, it is an indictment. They OUGHT to have known. It is an admission of direlection of duty, and a grave one, to say you voted to pass a bill without knowing the contents.

Personally, I grow weary of the apology "I didn't mean to" whether it is at home or in D.C. This is more defense than apology. It ought to be unnecessary, for example, to explain that one broke a family heirloom accidentally rather than on purpose. Surely the apologizer does not really believe that the owner of the plate believes his plate was broken deliberately and with malice aforethought.

But sometimes, don't you think we use "I didn't mean to" as some sort of magical incantation that not only divorces us from our actions and their results, but also serves as unspoken criticism of the wounded party? Sometimes, at least, there is a subtext something like, "Oh, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to stomp on your foot (therefore, your time for whimpering about it has now expired.  Shut.  Up.)."

Our son-in-law told us that his parents would say to him, "It's not enough not to mean to. You have to mean NOT to." Wise words, and I am getting a lot of mileage from them with our youngest.

Also reading:
The Gift of Fire, by Richard Mitchell. Quote:

"So it is that the habitual contemplation of folly, which does not seem to be the worst thing in the world, leads little by little to some consideration of vice, which does seem to be the worst thing in the world. It is troubling to notice that when we are foolish or "only foolish," as we easily deem it, we find ourselves all the more likely to do bad things. And when we can see, as I think I have so often managed to demonstrate, that some very foolish people are in a position to bring the consequences of their folly not only on themselves but on others, we do have the suspicion that something bad is going on. Surely, if we could certainly pronounce certain persons wise, we would think it a good thing to fall under their influence, and it seems only natural and inescapably right to expect some badness from the influence of fools. So it was that I gradually found, in my own considerations of nonsense, less play and more brooding, less glee and more melancholy, and the growing conviction that the silly mind, just as much as the wicked mind, if there is such a thing, makes bad things happen. "

I am not so agnostic as Richard Mitchell about the existance of the wicked mind.

lamb stew

Pip put the raw ingredients into the crock pot, after browning the cut up pieces of lamb:

Once it cooked a few hours, we added other things to it, namely about a cup of a leftover pumpkin dish that was only so-so- I put it through the blender and then stirred it into the crockpot:

It was delicious.

Unfortunately, we can never have just this recipe again. It's one of those a little of this, a little of that, some leftovers from the fridge, the last parsnip in the vegetable drawer, some leftover pumpkin stew whirled through the blender and whisked into the soup- it was delicious, but unrepeatable.

Here's a lamb stew that you could repeat. It comes from Extending the Table: A World Community Cookbook,* a cookbook I bought at the recommendation of my readers.=)
I've adjusted amounts to serve about 16 people:

In a large saucepan cook for about 3 minutes over high heat:
1/2 cup fat
1 T. fiesta chili powder (or red pepper)
1 diced onion
2 6 ounce cans tomato paste

Add 6-8 cups cubed lamb or beef
15--20 cups water or broth
2 T. ground turmeric
4t. salt

Bring to a rapid boil, reduce heat, adn cook over low heat for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, or until tender.

Add:
2 or 3 cans of cooked chickpeas or garbanzo beans
4 bunches of parsley, chopped
Water if needed

Just before serving, add 1/2 cup or more of tiny pasta- cous-cous, alphabet noodles- the recipe says the common pasta used for this is about teh size of a pea.

Cook just until pasta is done. SErve with lemon wedges and bread, says the author of Extending the table.


**Let me plug the way I bought it- as a member of Cashbaq, I get three percent back on Alibris purchases, and additionally I had a good coupon through Cashbaq for ten percent off my shopping at Alibris so with my Cashbaq coupon and discount it was 3.50- plus, I did some Christmas shopping while there and got some other goodies, too. so my shipping was less than Amazon's as well.

Cashbaq is defunct now, but you can get the same great deals via ebates- and they even offered to pick up cashbaq's orphaned customers!

Headlines

The US Civil Rights Commission finds that political appointees in Obama's justice department have been guilty of racial discrimination, failure to protect voting rights in race based discrimination cases, and over covering up their activities.  Shameful.  This is really worse than Watergate.  Will the media let their readers in on the findings?  Doubtful.

Another bomb plot- the details of this are confusing because the reporting keeps changing- first I read, bombs shipped from Yemen to England and then on to America where they ended up on some UPS trucks before being found?  Or... maybe ?.

Voter fraud- I just do not get what the big deal is about asking for picture ID in order to prove you are a citizen and the citizen you say you are before you can vote.  Otherwise, you're just saying that you don't care if illegal fraudsters cancel your vote.

Garlicky Baked Chicken

Garlicky Baked Chicken, from The Low-Carb Cookbook
serves 8, assuming each person gets 2 thighs
You can make this recipe ahead of time and freeze it or just keep it in the fridge overnight:

2 T. paprika
salt and pepper to taste
16 chicken thighs
6 minced garlic cloves
1/4 cup oil or fat
6 tablespoons lemon juice
pinch oregano

rub paprika, salt and pepper into chicken pieces. Mix together the garlic, oil, and lemon juice. Put the chicken in a glass baking pan and pour the marinade over it. Turn the chicken with tongs to coat completely, then cover and refrigerate overnight. To freeze, put the ingredients all together in a ziplock bag or other sealable container, shake well to coat, then freeze. On cooking day, defrost, spread in pan, and bake as directed.

Preheat oven to 400 F. Sprinkle with oregano. Roast uncovered for 40 minutes, turning once. Serve over bed of watercress.


LInked At Wholesome Foods

Who Writes the IPCC?

What is the IPCC? It stands for Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In 1988 two United Nations organizations put together this panel and tasked it with, according to Wikipedia:

reviewing and assessing the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change. It provides the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic consequences, notably the risk of climate change caused by human activity.

Governments make policy decisions based on the IPCC assessment reports.

Judith Curry explains the path that has brought her from a favored and respected member of the global warming alarmist community to a place where she is now shunned as a heretic who has rejected the True Dogma- according to Scientific American, of all places.

It's not even that she's changed her position that much on Global Warming. She is changing her mind on the IPCC, and that's a good thing. She explains that:

In Autumn 2005, I had decided that the responsible thing to do in making public statements on the subject of global warming was to adopt the position of the IPCC. My decision was based on two reasons: 1) the subject was very complex and I had personally investigated a relatively small subset of the topic; 2) I bought into the meme of “don’t trust what one scientists says, trust what thousands of IPCC scientists say.”

Then in November of 2009, those 'climate-gate' emails were released, demonstrating that some very unsavory, unethical, and just plain sloppy science (and bad ethics) among some of the biggest names on the IPCC and in the field of climate science. She started asking questions and trying to point out that it really was high time to acknowledge these problems and improve the standards in her field. So now she's a heretic-
and isn't it interesting that an article in the Scientific American, of all places, chooses to use the terms of faith to describe what's going in Climate Science and to banish Curry from the ranks of the Chosen?

Anyway, for all the good work Curry has done and is doing, what she did not now then, and may not yet realize, is that even on this claim of 'thousands' of scientists, the IPCC actually lies. There are not thousands of IPCC scientists. Donna Laframboise has been doing some homework that governments and citizens around the world should have done before:

Take a look at the Notes to Editors on the second page of the press release. This is supposed to be the non-controversial stuff, the basic nuts and bolts. Instead, it’s spin, spin, spin. Here’s a sentence for you:

Thousands of scientists from all over the world contribute to the IPCC reports.

Back in June, the IPCC released the list of people who’ve been selected to work on AR5. It said that list contained 831 names – not thousands. But the situation is really worse than that, since only those individuals assigned to Working Group 1 deal with hard science. (Working Group 2 speculates on how climate change might effect our world. Working Group 3 discusses what might be done in response.)

So, fewer than a thousand, not thousands, of scientists, and when you break up the IPCC into the hard science portion, the number is even smaller- just over 250. And it's even worse than that. Not all of these people are scientists- some of them are grad students still working on their doctorates.

The IPCC's youngest lead author was 25, had just earned his Master's, had no Ph.D, but had spent at least a year working for Greenpeace.


In 1994 Sari Kovats was one of only 21 people in the world chosen to work on the IPCC's chapter on health. She would not publish an academic paper of her own for three more years. She did not earn her Ph.D. until last year.
"...in the 15 years prior to earning her PhD, Kovats served once as a contributing author and twice as a lead author for the IPCC.
Which means governments around the world have been relying on the expertise of grad students when they make multi-billion-dollar climate change decisions."

This young man was a lead author before he'd earned even a Master's Degree.

Then there's:

Lisa Alexander, a Working Group 1 lead author. As recently as two years ago she was a research assistant in the Arts Faculty of Australia’s Monash University. That institution has a science faculty, but Alexander didn’t study there.
It wasn’t until 2009 that she earned her PhD, based on a thesis that dealt with climate modeling. Which makes this revelation by her current employer all the more astounding. In a hiring announcement, it says Alexander:

…played a key role as a contributing author to the influential Third and Fourth reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change…

Pardon me? The third IPCC report was released in 2001 (the fourth in 2007). How could someone have been selected to work on an IPCC report a decade before she’d even earned her PhD?

Johnathan Patz, lead author on the Health chapter, was chosen for that position before he'd ever published a peer reviewed paper in the field. He'd only had his Master's for two years, and he was lead author with only 8 other people. That's the infamous health chapter which contained large chunks of material passed off as original, but in fact, lifted directly from a book called Planetary Overload, authored by a man Patz credits as his most respected mentor.

It's quite eye-opening to consider that the most often offered criticism of those sceptical of the over-wrought claims of dooms day due to man-made global warming are:
1. You are funded by Big Oil or you are a stupid shill for somebody who is.
2. You're not a scientist/haven't published a peer reviewed paper.

These IPCC writers are funded by Big Government. Grants are awarded to those who stay within the orthodoxy of Climate Science and do not question the dogma. Publication is permitted those who have proven they are of the faith and denied to apostates and heretics.

So when policy makers were deferring their own judgment to that of the IPCC, did it occur to them that the IPCC was being written by young people who cut their teeth on Green Peace activism and who hadn't even earned their PH.D.s (and in at least one case, a Master's)?

These unelected elite in their twenties were chosen to form your opinion (and that of governments around the world) sometimes a full decade before they earned their doctorates- while those who challenged the status quo were dismissed on the basis that they weren't scientists, or, if they actually were scientists, then on the basis that they hadn't studied in the nebulous field of Climate Science, and hadn't published peer reviewed papers. Yet several of the IPCC lead authors also had no publications under their belts- peer reviewed or otherwise. Unless we count their high school term papers.

Eat Their Food

In the front introduction of the book Extending the Table, Paul Longacre (husband to Doris, who wrote The More With Less Cookbook) tells the story of a time he and two other North American Mennonites were visiting with a local church leader in Argentina. They asked him how he would begin to share the gospel with other indigenous people who do not have churches. His response, after a moment of thought, was to say, "I would go and eat their food." Then he began to weep.


Several years ago we were stationed in Okinawa, Japan and we were planning a family vacation to South Korea. A young couple with whom we were friends had been to South Korea many times, and they gave us some tips on making our stay more enjoyable. They really liked South Korea, loved the people, loved the culture, loved everything about their visits, and they wanted us to enjoy it as much as they had.

Their tips did help, and we thoroughly enjoyed our visit. South Korea is a beautiful country, and the people we met, every one of them, were kind, gracious, and friendly. A Korean man on the underground in Seoul took the time to explain to our seven year old some of the very real ways that Koreans suffered when North Korea closed all interaction between the two countries. In his case, his parents were separated. At one of the historical sites in Seoul a young mother who spoke no English helped her little boy communicate his desire to play tag with our girls, and she worked hard to foster communication and good will- we took pictures of the children together, and we think of her often. The sights, sounds, and people we met were just very special.

These were some of the suggestions offered by our friends. You will find that these suggestion tend to go a long way towards making yourself an interesting guest rather than a bad smell in the nostrils of your hosts and those around you:

1. Dress respectfully. In Korea, our friends explained, they still dress more formally, more like Americans did in, say, the 40s or 50s. Men don't wear shorts; women tend to wear skirts and dresses rather than blue jeans. The closer you are to the military base, the more accepting they are of girls in jeans, but if you go to Seoul, wear a skirt and look presentable.

What really interested me about this advice, once I came to think of it, is that it really was also true of Japan- young kids, teens, wore jeans and more casual clothing, but adults were more likely to dress neatly and ladies were usually in skirts rather than slacks in public. But our young friends hadn't noticed.

It comes down to being considerate of others. You might feel more comfortable in sweats and tennis shoes, but other people have to look at you, and you should consider their sensibilities when possible- and especially when you're the guest in their home.

2. Try to learn at least the minimum number of polite phrases in the language of your host country- please, thank-you, you're welcome, I'm so sorry, excuse me, and "No, I'm sorry, I'm too stupid to learn your language" at least demonstrate you mean well.

Our young friends claimed that the Koreans welcomed any attempt to speak their language, however badly butchered, while the Japanese would pretend not to understand you. I would agree that the Koreans seemed much more tolerant of bad accents than the Japanese, and perhaps that is a genuine cultural distinction. It's also possible that a thick American accent really does render you more incomprehensible in one language than another.

I know I find it much easier to understand people who combine English with a thick Spanish accent than those who combine it with a thick Ukrainian accent.

Again, I'm no expert, it's only a guess. The principle here would be- try really hard, no matter how stupid you think you sound, to use the language of your hosts, and always, always try to put the most charitable interpretation upon your failures to make yourself understood.

Even if you think you both speak the same language, be considerate in your choice of conversational topic. Follow their lead for acceptable conversational topics.

3. Eat their food.
Eat their food.

Eat their food.

Do this without critical commentary, without laughter, without making faces.

This is, or ought to be, understood without question.   This connection between friendship and eating food is an ancient one- probably as old as human beings.  Think of the story of Ali Baba, and how the refusal to share his hosts salt with him was how young Morgiana knew that the thief pretending to be a friend of her master was a dark enemy.
 When somebody has provided food for you, it is offensive to turn your nose up at it- it is a hurtful cold shoulder shoved betwixt you and your would -be hosts.

This is one of the reasons it's so important to teach your children to politely eat what's on their plate (even if it's just a mere, schmere, schmidgeon of a bite). I can't even begin to guess how many international relations are spoiled because of some ill-bred American being served something he's not familiar with and responding by making horrible faces and saying loudly that he doesn't, for instance, 'eat things that look back at me.' True story.

Conversely, my feelings of friendship cooled rather quickly when a Morrocan friend openly, and with some vigor, spat a mouthful of mushroom out on his plate and loudly told me that "in my country this is fish bait."

Three simple rules your mama taught you when you were little- dress nicely, speak nicely (using those 'magic' words), and eat nicely- will go a very long way toward making you a welcome guest instead of a blight on the landscape wherever you go.

Four Moms Answer the Mail

Welcome back to another Four Moms Open House! This week we are each answering questions from our mail bags- although I don't get many questions, so I swiped a couple from the other Moms' mail bags and somewhere else.

Here is an actual question I did get: What are your fav political blogs?

I rotate around, depending on my mood and the type of stories that are really interesting to me at the time. Most of the ones I look at (but not all of them) are in the 'poli-blogs' link at the top of the page. It's not as up to date as I would like, but it's there.


Here's one I snitched from another of the Four Moms: Youth groups. Do you participate? How do you socialize if you're part of a church & choose not to engage your kids in the youth group?

We are members of a church that doesn't do youth groups.=) However, that still hasn't solved all our problems in this arena, and we weren't always so fortunate. We prefer to socialize as a family- we like to invite other families over, sometimes families with kids our kids' age, and sometimes not, and we have a lot of single people over, too. We like to play multi-generational games, and we like our kids to listen in on multi-generational conversations. We think service projects are a fabulous way for kids to develop friendships, and we aren't especially concerned that their friends be their own age. Shared interests are more important than matched ages.

However, even though our church doesn't do youth groups per se, of late, there have been a lot of 'unofficial' youth group type activities that we don't find a great match for our family's goals and aspirations.

If you are intrigued, you might try to get your hands on The Socialization Trap, by Rick Boyer. I strongly recommend it. I do realize that kids *enjoy* a lot of time with their friends, but I really do not see that it's necessarily all that great for them. I see peer dependency, and its good friend age segregation, as serious problems in the church and in our culture. These have not been good for us as a whole, and I don't see it getting better. I don't mean they should never have friends their own age, but I do think less hanging out with friends exclusively their own age is better for them rather than more. We are blessed to be at a church where people really respect the convictions of others, and we do understand what a blessing that is.

Kindle:
You'll have to tell us all how you enjoy doing your actual reading on it. I am a bit skeptical about reading so much on a screen like that, but another book lover/Kindle user tells me she enjoys it very much.

I love it. I love that I can read in bed without making a lot of noise and without my arms getting tired. I love that I can highlight text, type my own notes, and send them to FB if I like. I like that I can make the text larger or smaller, and flip the Kindle to read a screen that is wider than it is tall or vice versa. I like that the Kindle bookmarks itself for me. It's not a replacement for hardcopies of books I hold in my hand, but it is a wonderful supplement- it's a magic book that tells me what I want to know and I'm thrilled with it.

It doesn't come with a light, so to read after dark, you need a booklight. I had a good one, but I seem to have lost it while camping at the beginning of the month, and this saddens me, as I do not wish to purchase another light (Update: I got one for Christmas).

Keep in mind that I did buy a second hand one for a very generously downsized amount from a kind friend. I am a cheapskate, and it would probably have taken me weeks to get over paying full price for one (because I live in the states and already own thousands of books- another friend lives overseas and paid full price for hers, and in her situation, I see things differently).

Be sure to visit the other moms and glean from their experience- or failures, as the case may be!

Connie,
Kimberly-
Kim-

And don't forget me- bookmark us, and come back! Also, leave me a question. I was really digging the bottom of the barrel here.

What's that? You did ask, and I still haven't answered? Oh. Well, leave it again. I am getting so forgetful I can throw myself a surprise party these days.

P.S. About the lights:

I have used two book lights designed for the Kindle, and a Mighty Bright UltraThin Book Light that was given to me a long time ago by a friend, or at least, something that looks just like it. I prefer it to the Kindle lights, mainly because it is smaller, the light is more focused, and it fits nicely into small spaces.

Of the Kindle lights I used, I prefer the Verso Clip-On Reading Light for Kindle. In fact, I'd love it without reservations if I hadn't used the mini book light first.

Laundry Room Redo

Remember when the Four Moms did our Open House post on laundry rooms? Well, I've been making some changes.



The big boys (my son and my husband) helped by helping me shift books and bookcases all around- We moved a medium sized blue bookcase from the laundry room and put it upstairs in the guestroom/Little Boy's room.
We (by which I mean they) moved an apple green bookcase from the sun-room into the laundry room, and we moved a very tall bookcase from one wall in the laundry room to another.

Then my son and I moved a bookcase that had been in my room into the living room, and we moved a bookcase from one place in the living room to another, in order to make room for the newly located one. Then we took a huge hutch and cupboard out of the laundry room and put it in my bedroom, and then we tidied up in the laundry room, and collected a bench from the dining room and two small shelves from the closet in the guest bedroom.

Pictures were shifted, a small green bookcase had to be moved out of the way in the upstairs bedroom and brought down to the ledge near my desk in the laundry room, odds and ends were collected from the garage----
But we weren't done yet.
The little boys helped by pulling the paper off some shelves that had been in the guestroom closet (and thus had blue and white floral paper on them):

Jenny-Any-Dots picked out some yellow paint for me, and I sanded down the smaller shelves and painted them yellow.

I had ordered a poster from All Posters.Com, and just about the time it came, the HG and her husband were cleaning out their boxes and got rid of a large framed Star Wars poster of Jar Jar Binks. My son got Jar Jar, I appropriated the frame because it was perfect for my poster.
So where the laundry room once looked like this:

It now looks like this:

Can you guess what this is?

In mid-summer day-lilies bloom on them. I just picked the dried stalks from the tire wall garden.

What once looked like this:

Is now considerably more crowded:

Although it will help when the dog food gets moved from the bag into the tote.

My husband put a working printer on my desk, which necessitated some further shifting of stuff



You can't really see it well here, but the wall paper border has yellow and green in it, the same green as the green bookcase.

In addition to the printer on my desk, I have a microscope and slides. In the green bookcase I have binoculars.

The thing on the wall is actually a plate holder, but I put books in it instead. The Boy picked out one of the books. Can you guess which one?

We'll be hanging scarves up on this soon.

But this remains my favorite:

This part makes me very happy. Friends who come in through the mudroom door can sit down and take off their boots and I'll have baskets in the larger shelf for scarves and mittens.

I think I'll end up painting the inside of the bookcases yellow, too. It seemed a little over-powering, this shade of yellow, so I left the insides white, or a streaky mixture of white and yellow. I would like to find a red that matches the red lettering on my poster and stencil something on the sides of the yellow and the green bookcases to bring them together. I am thinking maybe a couple umbrellas would be cute.

The mudroom, of course, leads into the living room:

Hanging up in the laundry room we have a genuine antique carpet beater from my great-grandparents (and I have used it to beat carpets), a print of a painting by Pisarro, and a poster of wildflowers, because every part of my house, just like every part of our lives, is supposed to be a place where learning occurs. There is no cut-off, no sharp divide.

There's another four moms post coming up tomorrow- we'll be answering reader's questions. Hope you'll be back to join us.

Linked at Good, True and Beautiful's Just for the Joy of It

Linked at Mellow Yellow Monday 

Linked at Miss Mustard Seeds Furniture Feature Friday

Democrat Politician Claims Not To Understand 'Deficit Reduction'

Voter to politicians: Please detail your deficit reduction priorities?

Democrat politician who has been in office for two decades. "I'm not sure what you mean by that."

This is followed by a long, rude, pause and a supercilious sneer at the insignificant insect who dared ask him such a silly question. He then asks her what deficit she means, his own personal deficit? He then asks incredulously:
"Deficit reduction? The deficit of the Federal Government?" and finally begins to answer.

With a lie.

He says the Federal Government has had a deficit reduction for a hundred years. It doesn't get any better.


Watch it here.

After the Harvest: View from Our House

Kale with Sausage and bar-b-qued onions

Extending the Table: A World Community Cookbook, like The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American, can be used as part of your geography (or social studies) studies in your home school. Combine Extending the Table with What the World Eats and cook around the world. Extending the Table has interesting information and anecdotes about living and eating in other parts of the world.

This recipe is from the Netherlands, and serves 4-6

Combine in saucepan a pound of curl kale, stripped from stems and finely chopped, or ten ounces frozen kale (I have never seen frozen kale)

1 pound smoked sausage, a little water.
Cover and simmer until kale is tender.

In a separate saucepan, cook until tender in salted water:

6-7 potatoes, peeled and chopped (about two pounds)

Mash potatoes with 1 tablespoon of butter, dash of pepper, 1/2 to 1 cup raw milk.

When well mashed, add cooked kale and mix well. mound potato-kale mixture on platter, sprinkle with ground nutmeg and arrange sausages around the sides of the plate. Serve with leftover broth or gravy and spicy mustard for the sausages.

This would be good with Barbecue-flavored baked onions from Hollyhocks and Radishes
this recipe serves 4

12 small white onions (about 1 1/2 inches)
1/4 cup catsup
1 T. brown sugar
2 T. water
1 teaspoon cider vinegar
1/4 t. salt
Freshly ground pepper to taste
4 slices of bacon, chopped and fried crisp, or, in this case, some fat from the cooked sausages above.


Boil the onions in lightly salted water (just enough to cover) for 4 or 5 minutes. Drain, place in a buttered, shallow, 1 1/2 quart baking dish, combine remaining ingredients and pour over onions. Bake, uncovered, for about 1/2 an hour.

News and Views

Betsy's collected some great links- no, the GOP isn't outspending the Democrats; states that are losing jobs vs states that are losing jobs; how Aqua Buddha attack ads backfired; and more!

In the Florida race for governor, Democrat Sink cheated on camera during a recent debate- they had agreed to no messages, and she accepted a message on her cell phone giving her advice on how to handle herself in the debate. The message was kind of dumb, and it should be embarrassing that anybody had to tell her this (when he says bad stuff about you, deny it)- but worse, when caught, she blamed the make-up artist who carried her the cell phone and fired her, lying and saying she thought the message was from her daughter. Only, that was such a bald-faced lie that even CNN is on her case. They have the audio, and she knew it was a message from her staff.
The worst part of all this, IMO, is firing an underling in order to give herself cover.

For more international news, do not neglect the newsfeed at Gates of Vienna. They have links to news articles from around the world, Germany, Greece, stories about the EU, Sweden, the Middle East, the South East, Australia, and more.

Here in the States, the CPSC demonstrates its own special brand of thuggery yet again- recalling perfectly safe baby slings.

Science and other News

Depressed? Taking two aspirin might actually be sound advice.

This is an interesting article on phthalates, but this sentence made me laugh:

A phthalate that scientists suspect may be particularly harmful to humans was found in an eraser at a level close to that which would be banned in a toy.

Okay, so? It was at a level *close* to that banned in a toy, which means it was not over the legal limit for a toy, but under it, so it wouldn't have been banned in a toy, either- it was a level considered 'safe' by our nanny state. In other words, this sentence says, "a pencil erase was found to be well within the confines of the law." Oooh, scary. And look at all these weasel terms: 'suspect,' 'may be', 'level close'... Those indefinite, fuzzy weasel words are liberally sprinkled throughout the article.

And then there's this:

Scientists are beginning to better understand how phthalates enter our bodies. One of the main channels may be the food we eat. In one 2006 German study, three volunteers abstained from eating for 48 hours, drinking only mineral water, while the levels of phthalates were measured in their urine.

Within the first 18 hours, levels of DEHP plummeted and remained low for the remaining 30 hours, suggesting that food was the main source.

So why all the excitement over a pencil eraser that was within safe limits?
Seriously, three people?
In a study four years old?
Could they not find more than three people willing to fast for two whole days?
Or have there been other takers, and those studies didn't feed the reporter's bent.

Guess which president seems to have lost the nuclear codes not just once, but apparently twice?

Property rights in England- a man's home is no longer his castle. This owner left for a couple of weeks and squatters moved in and changed the locks- he can't get help from the police, either.
Here's one of the squatters explaining:

‘When the owner came on Monday in the morning we told him we were squatting, and he was really aggressive.

‘We’ll go if the court tells us to but until then we’re staying. If he wants his things he’ll have to wait. If I find a job then I’ll start paying rent like a normal person.’

No, you still won't be a 'normal person' because a 'normal person' rents from a landlord who has voluntarily offered his property for rent. What you are is a thief.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1322246/Man-leaves-home-week-decorated-15-squatters-in.html#ixzz130pn8o1B

Awww, Mommy Brains are actually smarter (or at least, could be):

Exploratory research published by the American Psychological Association found that the brains of new mothers bulked up in areas linked to motivation and behavior, and that mothers who gushed the most about their babies showed the greatest growth in key parts of the mid-brain.

Personally, I've often pointed out that if a new mom felt dumber than she used to be, she should also take into account how many more things she had to keept track of and thinking about- and how much important those new things are.

Thomas Jefferson Fish and Potato Pie

Fish with potatoes- from The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American

Serves 6

Jeff Smith says this is a recipe Thomas Jefferson's daughter made.

You need 2 cups cooked mashed potatoes for this dish, so make sure you have some leftovers or make some mashed potatoes before you start.

You also need a pie crust

1. Poach about a pound of whitefish (cod or catfish both work, according to Mr. Smith)- put fish in a frying pan, put in just enough liquid to cover it, then simmer for ten minutes- do not boil, just simmer gently. Remove with slotted spoon, drain it, and gently shred it in a bowl with a fork, removing bones.

Add mashed potatoes, 2 T. butter, 1/4 cup whipping cream, 1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp black pepper, 1/2 t. salt, 2 T. brandy (optional- you can just add a little milk)

Mix all very well, using an electric mixer or immersion blender. Add milk or cream to make lighter.

Put into a pie crust and bake at 375 or until the crust is light brown and flaky, about 35 to 40 minutes.

You can also skip the pie crust and drop the filling by spoonfuls into hot fat, deep frying them for something like New England Codfish balls.

HEre's my version of Mr. Smith's piecrust recipe. I changed it because he uses margarine and crisco, imagining they are better for your heart than plain old lard, only it turns out, that was bad advice from the government. For this pie crust, since it's for a savory rather than sweet dish, you can use fat from your cooking or lard:

3 cups flour (I would use whole wheat pastry flour, if you use regular whole wheat the crust will be a bit tough)
1 t. salt
1 cup lard
1 egg
1 T. white vinegar
3-4 T. ice water

Stir flour and salt together. Use a pastry blender or two knives to cut in the fat. The fat should be mixed in until the mixture looks similar to cornmeal in consistency.
Mix egg and vinegar together, and stir this into the flour/fat mixture (he says to use a wooden fork). Add just enough ice water so the dough barely holds together, put dough on marble pastry board or your cold countertop and knead just enough to make the dough rollable.

Divide in half and roll out on waxed paper- makes two crusts for a top and bottom crust on a 9 inch pie pan.

For a low carb version, you could try sun-chokes or Jerusalem artichokes as they are called in some locales. However, I haven't seen these in my area stores in a very long time. Cauliflower could work if you drained it very well and added something extra - a bit of arrowroot powder, perhaps.

Our 14 year old made this. She used coconut oil for the pie crust, and the crust was delicious- unbelievably flaky and tender, melt in your mouth tasty goodness. It was also hard to work with, so I rolled it out for her.

The filling- I thought the two T. of brandy sounded like a bit much, but my husband said he thought it was right. He was right and I was wrong. In fact, he thinks perhaps one more Tablespoon would have been better.

Verdict: She did a great job, but it is not a great recipe. It's an okay recipe for using up leftover fish and mashed potatoes.
Problems- We thought the fish was flavorless. We used pollack and think it would have been better cooked until the broiler. Poaching was bleh. Salmon would have been tasty. We also thought it could have used more of something- cheese, maybe? Oooh, cottage cheese blended in with the mashed potatoes. With those adjustments (broil fish for better flavor, add cheese or spices, and use with leftover fish and mashed potatoes), it could be a good recipe rather than just okay.

Pip Peels Pumpkin

Well, she peeled some and baked some:

Transparency, Not So Much

The office that oversees TARP funds (you know, Taxpayer money?) seems to be looking to hire somebody to keep the public from finding out much about where our money is going:

Officials at the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Stability contracted with a small consulting firm that has given nearly $25,000 to Democratic candidates since 2005 (and no money to Republicans) to hire “Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Analysts to support the Disclosure Services, Privacy and Treasury Records.” The firm is currently advertising a job opening for a FOIA analyst with experience in the “Use of FOIA/PA exemptions to withhold information from release to the public” (emphasis mine, and if that link goes down, The Examiner has kept a copy for its records).

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/treasury-hires-democrat-donors-to-be-freedom-of-information-act-analysts-105727838.html#ixzz13UfKM2iB

Salmon Quesedilla Appetizers or Snacks

Salmon Quesedillas

Ingredients:
Salmon
lemon juice
garlic
basil
green onion
tortillas
coconut oil
butter
grated cheese

Combine cooked salmon- either two cans of salmon or the equivalent amount of fresh or frozen cooked salmin- with lemon juice (about two tablespoons), minced garlic (about two tablespoons, but there could always be more garlic), a couple of tablespoons of basil, and some diced green onion (about 1/4 cup).

Fry this mixture or heat it up in the microwave.

Then put buttered tortillas on a hot griddle. Sprinkle some grated cheese (cheddar, jack, or...?) over one half of the tortilla, top that half with some salmon mixture, sprinkle more cheese over that, and fold the bare tortilla half over that. When the cheese begins to melt, flip the tortilla and grill the other side. Top with salsa and sour cream if you have it. We've eaten these tent camping before. They cook up very nicely on a grill over a fire, or wrapped in foil and laid upon the coals.

To have them as an appetizer, cut the fried quesedilla into thin triangles or strips. Top with a dollop of pumpkin seed salsa for a really special treat.


Linked at the Whole Foods Holiday Progressive Dinner Linkup:

• October 19 – Wardeh from GNOWFGLINS started off with soups
• October 26 – Katie over at Kitchen Stewardship shares her favorite appetizer
  
• November 2 – Donielle will be serving salad at Naturally Knocked Up
• November 9 – Enjoy wonderful bread dishes at TBA
• November 16 – Main dishes will be served at Keeper of the Home with Stephanie
• November 23 – Extra side dishes are always a must! Join Kimi at The Nourishing Gourmet.
• November 30 – Kate at Modern Alternative Mama hosts our week on desserts.
• December 7 – Drinks will be served at Frugal Granola with Michele.

You’re Invited!

Visit the host blogs on the upcoming Tuesdays, and share your own links.

Political Nutshells

From Drew in a post about the Alaskan race, comes this statement which I think it pretty much fits every political race:

I'm pretty sick and tired of politicians who think cutting deals with other politicians to divvy up other people's money and then giving some of it back to the chosen ones is the height of leadership.

And from Ace:

A lot of conservatives express their political views by not engaging with politics -- after all, government is a threat, so why participate in its functions?

Well, as Geroge Bush said about terrorists:

You may not be interested in politicians, but believe me, politicians are interested in you.

And if you want them off your backs you have to fire those who are taking an undue interest in your private, personal decisions.

Michelle Malkin is rounding up incidents of voter fraud- by the thousands in several key states. Here's one of the smaller incidents:

In Florida, it’s suspected absentee ballot fraud — from within a city commissioner’s office:

When police raided Daytona Beach City Commissioner Derrick Henry’s office this week and seized his computer, they say they discovered evidence of what election experts say has become a rampant, largely ignored and troubling issue in Florida — the widespread abuse of absentee ballots.

Police say Henry’s computer was used to obtain dozens of absentee ballots prior to the city’s Aug. 24 elections, in which he was re-elected.

Pumpkin Shake

I totally got this idea from Created by Diane. It's a delicious idea. I made some changes, but they are the sort of changes like using whole, raw milk instead of skim milk, and whole milk yogurt instead of non-fat. And, since I like mine sweeter, I added maple syrup (the real stuff).  Vegetarians could make it with almond or soy milk and a bit of tofu or tofu yogurt.

It's a little unbelieveable how much this tastes like pumpkin when there is no pumpkin in it.

There's one sweet potato, which I baked in the microwave in a cup with an inch or two of water in it. That was cooled and peeled.

Then it went into the blender along with:
1/2 cup milk (almond milk works)
1/2 cup yogurt (I used vanilla)
a tablespoon of real maple syrup (optional, but I liked it better sweeter)
some pumpkin pie spice

Liquify:

The consistency is pretty thick- I ate it with a spoon, more like a pumpkin pudding.

I think this would be really yummy with some melted cream cheese stirred in well, and then poured into a pie shell and chilled.

I wondered about putting some frozen coffee (we freeze leftover coffee for cold coffee drinks) in it in the blender, too.

Linked at:

Monday Mania

Tuesday Twister

Tempt My Tummy Tuesday

Hearth and Soul

Tasty Tuesday from Beauty and Bedlam

Vegetarian Foodie Fridays

Thai Style Beef or Lamb Curry

Thai Style Beef Curry, from The Low-Carb Cookbook

Although the recipe calls for beef, we are using lamb because a friend butchered her lambs recently, so we have a lot of lamb in our freezer.

2 tablespoons oil, we'll use coconut oil
3 tablespoons curry paste
2 1/2 cups canned coconut milk
2 1/2 pounds meat, cut into 1 inch cubes

salt and pepper to taste
garnish with cilantro if you have it.

Heat the oil in a large saucepan or dutch oven, add curry paste adn cook over low heat for five minutes. Add coconut milk, stir, heat another 3 minutes. Add the meat, bring to a boil, and lower heat to a gentle simmer. Cover, stirring from time to time. Cook on low heat on a back burner until meat is soft. If using chuck steak, as the recipe calls for, this would be nearly 2 hours. For our lamb, probably 45 minutes would more than do it. Then raise the heat, remove cover, and cook another ten minutes, until sauce thickens.

Serve over rice, but then it's no longer a low-carb dish.=)

Linked at Monday Mania

Linked at Dining with Debbie's What On the Menu

Linked at Foodie Friday

Pledge of Allegiance Kerfluffle

From Ace (with language): In New York City- the directions on the ballot instruct voters to fill out the circle above the name of their candidate of choice. If you follow those instructions and intend to vote Republican, you will actually be voting for the green party candidate. The election board it doesn't matter- they will post proper instructions in the booths and give correct sample ballots, but it's still irrelevant:

Neal Rosenstein, voting coordinator for the New York Public Interest Research Group, said the error won’t have a large impact on voters because most don’t even read the instructions.

From all over the place (starting with Gateway PUndit)- This past Wednesday in Illinois there was a debate hosted by the League of Woman Voters. The candidates 'debating' were:
Democratic Melissa Bean, the incumbent
Joe Walsh, GOP challenger
Bill Scheurer, Green Party challenger

Moderator: Kathy Tate-Bradish, imported from out of town because Bean didn't want a local moderator.

At the start of the evening, a member of the audience raised his hand and asked if they were going to say the Pledge- he says he thought she genuinely forgot it. She said no. She didn't just say no, she said she had nothing either for or against saying the Pledge, but they weren't going to do it, it wasn't scheduled or any part of these events.

At which point she had to shut up, because the audience had pretty much risen en masse and was reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

She said it with them, but then rebuked them for 'disrespecting' her and said she had been 'forced' to say it too and that wasn't right and she would not be disrespected again.

But it gets better. Click through to see her on film attempting to explain what she meant when she said saying the Pledge was disrespectful to her. It's because she sees herself as holding the authority of a teacher, and the adults in the audience were as minor children in her high school class. Seriously. and the AP government teacher objects to the 'bad example' set for children that night- I think it was a fabulous example, myself.



And it gets better:

Ms Tate-Bradish, the moderator was very involved in the Illinois effort to make Barak Obama president, she even hosted campaign events for Obama in her own home.

She says the event was obviously 'planned,' and, IMO, her reaction, and that of the League of Women Voters, is what makes this an interesting story:

Illinois' top League of Women Voters official said “phony patriotism” is driving criticism over a moderator's reaction when she was asked if the Pledge of Allegiance would be recited before an 8th Congressional District debate this week.

Executive Director Jan Czarnik said what happened at Wednesday's debate and subsequent criticism directed at moderator Kathy Tate-Bradish was an attempt by supporters of Republican candidate Joe Walsh of McHenry and tea party members to bully the organization.

Did she just admit that the Pledge of Allegiance isn't a reflection of Democratic Party values?

More here

Quinoa Pilaf

I didn't make this last week because it turned out moths had gotten to my quinoa, which made me very bitter.

Quinoa Pilaf with Almonds and Raisins, from Vegetarian Times
six servings

2 medium carrots, diced
1 tablespoon oil or fat
1/2 an onion, sliced thin
1/4 tsp turmeric
3 cups water
1 1/2 cups uncooked quinoa
1/2 green bell pepper, diced (can be frozen)
2 T. slivered almonds
2 T. golden raisins
1/2 cup frozen peas, thawed


Steam the carrots for 5-8 minutes (they should not be mushy)
Heat oil in large pan, and cook onion until translucent. Add turmeric, stir well, add water, bring to boil. Add quinoa, stirring to push it under the water. Place pepper, almonds and raisins on top. Cover and simmer about 25 minutes- quinoa should be light and fluffy, water absorbed. Add peas during the last five minutes and fluff with fork.

Adoption

These two posts from the same blog on how to support friends and acquaintances who are adopting children, especially children from 'hard places' and are excellent.

Post One

Post Two

Here's what worked for us: Spend lots of time with the new children. Do not let them spend lots of time with other people. They need bonding time. Birth children get nine months in the womb- and they are bonding with their mother and other people in the house. They can hear her. They taste what she tastes. They can smell in the womb. So give the new children the protected time and space they need to figure out what's going on, to bond with you.

Here's what we didn't get, but man, it would have been fantastic- a shower. We needed all new clothes for the two new kids, and they didn't come with any toys to speak of. A shower of a few meals for the freezer would have been amazing.

Here's something else you can give- sensitive acceptance. There was at least one person actively offended that we wouldn't send our new kids home to her for an outing. Others weren't offended, but it was exhausting to constantly have to defend myself or explain what we were doing and why in a way that felt like we also had to justify it.

Later there was another person actively offended that we would not tell her which children were adopted, because at that time one of the girls was of that age where young people do not like to stand out from their crowd. Others would ask us, and when I would explain that one of our girls had asked us not to tell people, would feel entitled or compelled to tell us that was wrong, she should not be ashamed of being adopted. She wasn't ashamed of being adopted, she was embarrassed about being stared at, which was the invariable result when people learned she was adopted. This is because our older siblings actually look exactly like the rest of our kids- people often think that two kids with no shared genetic material are twins. So people stared because they were astonished and were trying to discover something they'd missed. They didn't mean to be rude, and she was at that age when you don't really have your full skin yet.

I wrote some other unsolicited adoption advice here. Here's an excerpt:

Often in an older adoption (not always, but often) they will hold their new parents at arm's length for all kinds of reasons, depending on their circumstances- they can't attach well, they don't trust people calling themselves Mom and Dad, they resent being adopted out and so they resent their adoptive parents, their ability to develop close, loving ties has been crippled by previous experiences, all sorts of reasons. But children still need physical contact and love, and they will get it where they can, and this makes them vulnerable to predators. What often happens is that adopted children will be extremely affectionate with strangers and acquaintances so that they can avoid physical contact at home, this strengthens their sense of insecurity when they need to be developing a sense of security, and is just not healthy or safe for them

Tell your friends and family to give you time with your new children. Ask your friends and family NOT to come over and shower the children with physical affection. You need to help these children learn to bond, and I believe it is healthiest for these new blessings to learn to come to you, their parents, to fill up their love buckets first, because you are the only constant in their lives now. Then they can add others to their circle, but they need this relationship with their new parents to be firm first, as it is foundational for their mental and emotional health, as well as for their personal safety. Child predators have a honed radar for seeking and finding vulnerable, insecure children. And if your friends and family will cooperate with you, this will be much easier. Instead of letting the new children climb up in their laps and give them hugs and cuddles, they need to be strong and self sacrificing enough to gently redirect the child to the new parent, saying something like, "I'm sorry, but I am just getting up to get a drink, why don't you go cuddle with your Mommy?" And then they need to get up and make themselves unavailable for snuggles. If they won't, don't have them around your kids until you are sure your kids are well bonded. It's that important.

And do click through those first two links- fabulous ideas there.


Linked at Works for Me