Tom's Visit and Cooking

We have had Tom, Fred's nephew, visiting this week. It has been quite fun spending time with him and getting to know him better. It's his first trip out by himself to visit. I have been making quite a few desserts for him. Tom picked an apple blueberry pie for dinner tonight at Patrick and Theresa's (there will be poker tonight as well! But most importantly, there will be amazing food cooked by Patrick. mmmmmm!). The pie recipe is from Betty's Pies Favorite Recipes. If you don't know anything about pies, then you have to get this book! Betty ran a pie shop outside of Duluth, MN and it is the very best pie in the whole world. My favorite is the five-layer chocolate pie (to die for!, honestly.) But Tom picked a fruit pie to try. Here are some photos of the pie before, during and after cooking.

Here is the pie filling with 4 cups of sliced apples, 2 cups of fresh blueberries and sugar, etc., before mixing.

This pie doesn't have a crust for the top, rather it is a crumble mixture of butter, nutmeg, brown sugar and flour that is sprinkled on top of the fruit and baked.

Here we see the baking pie.

Here is the finished pie. Looks delicious. I'll let you know tomorrow if it actually is! 8-)

I also made some cookies from Martha Stewart's Cookies. I'm not sure if I spoke about our trip to Gualala, but it included a very fine bakery that had Chocolate Ginger cookies. I didn't have the recipe, but you'll notice that the cover cookie on the right is a chocolate ginger cookie and the cookies I made on the left are from the book. I think I need to make them large next time and wait until they are more cracked. The recipe says to remove them when they just start to crack, but then they don't get real cracked like the ones on the right. However, word of warning: these cookies are not an afternoon cookie. You have to chill the dough for two hours and then you have to roll them into balls and chill again and then roll them in granulated sugar. Quite a process. I think these are special occasion cookies. The thin and crispy chocolate chip cookies were made in a snap and Tom seemed to like them quite a bit.

Dr. Horrible!

Yep. Joss Whedon has made a series for the internet. And it stars Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day. It is Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. You have to watch it! You can also go to http://www.drhorrible.com/

Soon I Will Be Invincible!

Yes! The best summer book. I bought it on impulse at Border's at their buy one get one half off sale. How could I not? Super heroes, novels, all combined in one package?

It did not disappoint. The super heroes are unique. The villians are genetically wired to try to rule the world. They can't not try. It's called Malign Hypercognition Disorder. How cool is that? It is just too fabulous. It takes all the formulaic nonsense and makes it fresh and interesting and so, so readable. Perfect beach read, cabin read, cave read, mountaintop read. Just go get already! Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman.

Crap! I was fooled into buying an old book in a new package!

Foolish, foolish librarian.  I saw a new Mary Balogh book and though, YEA!  I should have checked the publication date as it was originally published in 1991 and republished in 2008.

The Ideal Wife SUCKS!

Laptop Institute

I'm in Memphis at the Laptop Institute.  So far we have been going to excellent sessions. I'm now on twitter and have many ideas for using technology in the classroom.  I'm totally stoked by all of this info. It has been really great to get to know Judy and Jose and John better.  I'm really looking forward to working with the tech dept. more next year.  

We went to Blue City Cafe for dinner for rib and catfish.  It was interesting, but I think I prefer Louisiana BBQ and gumbo. 8-)

More IPOD Covers and Purses

IPOD Covers:

To the left you can see the little Iphone/Ipod cover that I made for mom. It has a cute ladybug button. I made a plain one for dad. They seem to like them pretty well. I did them in the round, so the fit is a bit tighter, which I like.








PURSES:
This is the green purse body, partially felted. The machine felting didn't do a real good job. I put it through twice. I think I need to do it again with tennis shoes for agitation.



Here are the purse straps before and after felting. The straps felted pretty easily, but the purse bodies were much more difficult.









SARI YARN:
The photo to the left shows the sari yarn. It is very brilliant and the photo doesn't do it justice. Perhaps I'll get a better camera when my incentive check arrives. 8-)

The purse body I was making with this yarn is done. I just need to stitch it up and then add the strap. It should give over time, they say. So we'll see how it does. I'm really pleased with the yarn though. It does vary in thickness, but overall is easy to work with. There wasn't much in the way of sticks and odd bits of detritus in the yarn, so it was pretty clean.

Summer Book Reads So Far:

NONFICTION:

I'm off to a big start on summer book reads. I just finished a magazine review of a work book that I loved Librarians as Learning Specialists: Meeting the Learning Imperative for the 21st Century by Allison Zmuda and Violet H. Harada. If you are a school librarian, you must get this book! I liked it so much that I bought five more copies to give to my school directors and the other librarians.

The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead by David Callahan. I'm still waiting to hear all about academics. So far we have been through the history of cheating in America, sports, banking, industry, blah blah blah...blah. Honestly! I don't think I will be able to get through the tedium of all the bad people out there and how we set up systems to encourage bad behavior and then are surprized when people are weak and want to keep their jobs and so they do bad things. Can you say housing market collapse? Really. We have a very bad, perverse culture that values money and status above principles. End of story.

FICTION:

The Android's Dream by John Scalzi. Oooooooh baby! I loved his other book, Old Man's War, and was hoping that this would not disappoint. Yes! A great summer read. SOOOOOO FUNNY! That first chapter is worth the price of the whole book. The plot is zany and believable. The aliens are weird and fully drawn out. The characters have depth and humor and lovely shades of grey that make it more interesting to see what they will do in the end. The plot twists are unexpected and thoroughly enjoyable. The action is well written. It's a joy to read and I highly recommend it.

Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn. I listened to this one from audible.com and it was fabulous. The reader got the voices just right and really added a depth to the story. I thought at first I would be getting one of your standard Victorian romances with a little mystery thrown in, but this was a full bore, hardcore mystery with just a dash of romance. It opens with the death of Julia's husband, who is sickly to start with. However, a mysterious man comes to see her following his death and he thinks her husband may have been murdered. From that moment on we see a shy and retiring woman develop a backbone and learn to be herself and learn what she wants out of life. It is very well written and has many surprising twists and turns. I even stayed up until 2 am to get it finished. Always the mark of a must read! And there is a sequel....I love it!