Working it Out

We've been pretty uninspired about housework around here lately, so I thought we might need a new system to get us on track. Over the years, Bella and I have tried quite a few different chore systems to try to take the work out of work and make it fun. Some have been more successful than others, but each one has been entertaining in its own way - so I thought it might be a good idea to post a few of the family systems/books/resources we've tried, in case a few of you might like to give them a try too.

The first one we fell in love with was Handipoints. This website used to allow you to make chore lists for each child - and not just chores, but a lot of other good activities too, from homework enrichment activities, to exercise ideas, to general good behavior. Each came with an associated number of points. Points could be spent on activities that kids selected from another area of the website, things ranging from "Play a Game" to "Invite a friend roller-skating" - the fun activities were almost as useful as the chore lists. Another kind of points could also be spent in a virtual playland like Moshi Monsters or Webkinz, on a cat figure that decorated her house or played games. So much fun. Sadly, the website did an update in September, and I don't know about the rest of the world, but the Janicki family at least cannot get this website to work to save our lives. We're still crossing our fingers and hoping it comes back.

The second fun chore idea we've tried is called Chore Wars. This one allows you to choose a D&D style character. When you do a chore, your character gets experience points, which will be familiar to you if you've ever played old school D&D or Final Fantasy. Different chores also give you experience in different things (for instance, "washing dishes" takes both constitution and dexterity - don't want to drop the dishes, looking at old food may take a strong stomach ;) ). After so many experience points, your character levels up, and her stats change according to the tasks you've been performing. You also have a random chance of either meeting a monster or finding a dropped item. For instance, washing dishes gives you between 1 and 30 gold pieces, a 20% chance of treasure (such as a spoon - which in our house, can be redeemed for the opportunity to choose the next supper), and may lead to an encounter with a water elemental - which is a fake battle in static cartoon form. Your character hits, then they hit, etc., until one or the other of you is vanquished - no points there, but still fun!

Today's selection, an iPhone app, is a little like both systems put together. You Rule Chores is an app that allows players to choose a cartoon superhero, complete with a special power, such as "power over time and space" or kung fu prowess. After so many chores, your character will level up, giving them additional powers which you can see by touching them with your finger. For instance, Bella's kung fu girl can now catch a butterfly with chopsticks. Each chore counts towards this leveling, and also gives you between 1 and 5 coins. Coins can be saved up for rewards such as computer time or a trip to the ice cream store. I think the defaul reward settings are eminently reasonable, which is nice, as I don't really like to tweak much. For instance, "watch a movie at home - must start by 7 p.m." will cost 10 coins, which Bella could earn by cleaning her room 3 times, doing her homework for 3 days, or, if she was really, really feeling lazy, by brushing her teeth 10 days in a row. The graphics and sounds are nice, and it's fun to use. Currently, it's priced at $3.99 on the app store. It may be worth checking out!



If you have any fun ways around your house to pretend you're not doing chores, I'd love to hear them!

The Sweet Life?

Today we are getting ready around here for a trip to the endocrinologist, so I thought I'd blog about something more serious than usual: diabetes. As I mentioned briefly at the start of this blog, my daughter has type 1 diabetes. This came as a shock to me when we found out. While my grandmother did develop type 2 diabetes at the end of her life, after seemingly existing on a diet of air and Whitman's Sampler chocolates for several years as far as I, the occasionally visiting teenage granddaughter, could see, no one in our family has ever had a more clearly hereditary form of diabetes, and in fact, when they told me that Bella had it, I was not 100 percent sure what it was, though I was sure that the nurses had lost their minds when they told me that I would be walking out of the hospital with a bag of syringes and something called insulin in a week, left to our own devices - me giving her shots and counting something called "carbohydrates". Me, whose interest in food previously was purely gourmet. Me, who averts her eyes whenever they show scenes on Grey's Anatomy that actually have to deal with treating patients. Somehow, if I'd thought about it at all, I'd always thought that people with serious health issues were treated by visiting nurses. Definitely not left in the hands of novice parents, shown some rudimentary steps by jovial doctors who assure you that "you'll get the hang of it".

The first time I tried to test my own blood sugar to show Bella how painless it is, I hopped around the room saying "Ow!" and cradling my hand for ten minutes. It was all I could do not to cry. It's a good thing one of us is tough. I am no stranger to pain myself. I had open heart surgery when I was four to correct a congenital defect. But they had the decency to put me to sleep first.

Somehow we've come through it, Bella and I. I've educated myself, read all the right books, marched in the Walk to Cure Diabetes, met up with other parents of type 1 kids at Central Ohio Diabetes Association events. And yet...I wonder at what point you start to feel like you're doing it right. When do you feel capable and why is there no clear cut plan? When do you stop feeling angry that your daughter has to count carbohydrates and worry about chronic illness, when you did all the right things - breastfeeding, and avoiding caffeine and alcohol and hair dye. I once, in a fit of pregnancy panic, even called the manufacturers of a lotion after learning that it contained Vitamin A, which apparently pregnant women aren't supposed to use in a concentrated form. Why didn't all that vigilance pay off? If it didn't pay off then, what's to say the most careful treatment regiment will pay off now? Most of the time, we deal with our old 'new' lifestyle pretty well these days, but still sometimes, I worry.

The Best of 2011

Today's list post takes a page from Entertainment Weekly, or any number of other magazines and newspapers at this time of the year, as we announce our annual Best of awards. Being a completely biased publication, this blog will now submit, in snappy numerical format, my favorite (and therefore, the best, of course!) books, movies and music of 2011. If the Mayans are right and the world ends next year, I guess that makes these submissions the best of all time, since there won't be a 2012 list. But I think there will be one.

Drumroll please...

Books (Perhaps Not All From This Year, But Books I Read This Year)

1. What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty
2. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
3. What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets by Peter Menzel
4. Feed and Deadline by Mira Grant (2 books, but one amazing series)
5. One Salt Sea by Seanan McGuire
6. IraqiGirl: Diary of a Teenage Girl in Iraq
7. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
8. Lisey's Story by Stephen King
9. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua
10. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

Movies and TV

1. Dollhouse
2. American Horror Story
3. Glee
4. An Education
5. Firefly
6. Army Wives
7. Never Let Me Go (a double category winner :) )
8. Fringe
9. Clare and Francis
10. Black Swan

Music (or, This Year's Soundtrack)

1. Owl City
2. Lady Gaga
3. Glee music
4. Harry Connick Jr - "Stardust"
5. Fastball - "The Way"
6. Music from Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog
7. Jack Johnson
8. The Pogues
9. "What You Don't Know" by Jonatha Brooke
10. "Adventures of Isabel" by Natalie Merchant

Games

1. The Sims Medieval
2. Who Would Win?
3. Pandemic
4. Smallville
5. Top Ten: The Bill of Rights
6. Words with Friends
7. Fluxx
8. Mad Scientist University
9. The Sims 2 (still a better game mechanic than Sims 3)
10. Kung Fu Fighting

Descriptions of said winners are, perhaps, yet to come. In the meantime, I'd love to hear your best of lists, readers!

What Alice Forgot

What would your ten-years-ago self say about your life if she stepped into it this morning? Would you like the way you've been conducting your life? Has it turned out the way you had planned? Is the person you are now the person you wanted to be? These are the questions that Alice grapples with after she wakes up on the floor of a gym one morning with a head injury, unexpectedly 39 and divorcing, with three children, instead of 29 and pregnant with their first child, as she remembers being yesterday.

There were some page-turning questions that kept me up into the wee hours of the morning - will Alice reconcile with her husband? Will she get her memory back? Who is this Gina that she keeps hazily remembering, and wouldn't she have been better forgotten? Liane Moriarty is a hell of a writer. Watching her reconnect with her sister, and her husband, and her life, makes you want to phone all the people you care about and share your own good memories - makes you think about the choices you've made, and the things you've kept and lost along the way.

Everyone should read this book immediately.

Yay me?

Feeling a little iffy about my housecleaning prowess after this conversation with my daughter:

Bella walks into bedroom, which looks like a tornado hit it after yesterday's fruitless quest for lost computer games to install on new laptop.

Bella: Whoah!

Me: I know, I still need to clean this room after yesterday!

Bella: No, not that - the nightstand. It's really clean! (pointing at the nightstand I have managed to clean off this morning).

Apparently, huge mess is normal. But I have made one thing impeccably clean. Go me?

Haven't We Been Here Before?

Yesterday, my family and I went to see a movie that was frankly, silly. I hadn't really wanted to see it, but I love going to the movies, and every time I think, "Wow! Won't this be a terrible movie?" I remember what a good time I've had watching terrible movies in the past, like Starship Troopers or the movie with the hamster secret agents. Sometimes it's as much about the theater experience as it is the movie itself. So, a Christmas outing seemed like a fine idea.

But as I was sitting in the movie - The Darkest Hour, which, for those of you who missed the preview, is about invisible aliens made of electricity who overtake Russia and kill instantly by blasting people unlucky enough to touch them to smithereens - as I was watching this, I started to think of how much this set reminded me of another set, which leads me to today's topic: movies that share sets. I thought this would be the kind of thing that is easy to look up online, because the internet is filled with both trivia lovers and movie buffs. Sadly, it is not. There are a few websites who have been here before, among them this one. I've also learned of a few specific examples. Did you know that the Desperate Housewives live in the same neighborhood as Samantha from Bewitched? Or that Back to the Future and To Kill a Mockingbird shared the same town? The most blatant example I can personally think of is a BBC crossover moment. When I watched the old BBC version of Ballet Shoes (a cute movie about three orphaned girls who excel in the arts, based on a book by Noel Streatfeild), I was surprised to see that the girls apparently lived in Jean and Lionel's house, from As Time Goes By. Their living room had been rearranged, but it made for an eerily familiar effect, especially when they went up the stairs. It's hard to change stairs.

Unfortunately, I could find absolutely no indication that the movie I saw yesterday shared a set. Apparently, most of it was shot on location in Russia. But I still think this topic is ripe for a website. Well, readers? Do you have any other good examples of this phenomenon?

Happy Chanukkah! (with recipe)

So, I think today is the third day of Chanukah, if I'm counting correctly. On the first day of Chanukah, my brother Jack came home from school and said, "Did you know it's Chanukah today? Let's make latkes."

And I said, "Holidays that involve cooking? I'm always up for those!"

So we made vegan latkes, the recipe I will now give to you, so that you too can enjoy buttery (or fake buttery, as the case may be) potato goodness in your home.
We also, with Bella, explored the history of Chanukah. Up til now, my Chanukah information has come from this source. In our quest to learn a little more about the holiday, we came up with two good sources (particularly for kids under 10) - Sesame Street's very cute, quick explanation and a new app: Chai on Chanukah.

Chai on Chanukah not only explains the history of the holiday in an interactive storybook, but also includes a virtual dreidel game, a virtual menorah to light, and a funny (but also fairly stereotypical) present-opening game. Might be something to check out, if you're looking for a fun new Chanukah app for your kids.

And now:

Vegan Latkes

3 potatoes
1 tsp. egg replacer
1/4 cup minced onion
1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
2 tb. margarine or vegan butter substitute
vegetable oil

1. Peel and grate potatoes to measure 4 cups. Put in colander to drain and press gently on top with paper towels to get rid of excess water.

2. Mix egg replacer, flour, onion, salt, pepper and baking powder in large bowl, then mix with potatoes. Put margarine in skillet and melt, then add vegetable oil to cover the skillet with a thin layer of oil. Set heat to medium high.

3. Make balls of potato mixture and then shape into pancake shapes before gently placing in hot skillet. Flatten out with spatula, but gently. Cook each side until golden brown and thoroughly cooked. Turn the heat down if it seems like they're getting browned too fast.

4. Serve warm, with applesauce and (vegan) sour cream.

10 Again

Ten Things I Love About the Holidays

1. Food, of course! Yay food! Christmas cookies, Christmas pudding, and all seasonal things like mince pies, or roast goose, buche de noel and peppermint bark.

2. Maybe peppermint bark deserves a special mention all its own. Yum, yum, yum.



You can buy it from here.

3. Carols and Christmas songs like this one, this one, and this one.

4. Ok, I admit it, I love getting presents. Especially if they are books, video games, or something for the kitchen.

5. I love giving them too.

6. The feeling of camaraderie everybody seems to get around December, as if they've suddenly realized that goodwill towards men includes everyone, and not just the people they like.

7. Christmas specials on tv. My absolute favorite is "The Night Before Christmas" with the mice, but this may be an opinion shared by no one but me.

8. Seeing our stockings hung by the chimney with care, and the house looking all decorated and Christmas-y.

9. Tracking Santa on NORAD's Santa Tracker with my daughter on Christmas eve. We also enjoy hanging out at this website around Christmas-time.

10. Seeing the myriad of fun new ways that others celebrate the holidays, and incorporating their traditions into our own family traditions.

How about you? What are your favorite holiday traditions?

Clearing up the confusion

Random Spanish

A few interesting things I learned about Spanish today, while subbing:

1. The word for fur you wear "piel" is not the same as fur on an animal "pelo".

2. Pez means fish.

3. Zorro means fox. Cause he's sneaky like one, right?

4. Poner means 'to put down', making the phrase 'You got poned!' Spanglish for 'you were put down!'

Cool stuff. :)

4-star vegan cuisine at our house tonight

An exceptional recipe (which just so happens to be both incredibly fast and easy) was cooked at our house tonight (not by me), and since the chef has graciously agreed to share his recipe, I thought I'd pass it on to you! You can also substitute whatever fresh or frozen vegetables you have available in your fridge or garden, in roughly equal amounts.

What's-in-the-Fridge? Vegan Stir-Fry

Serves 3. Takes approximately 15-20 minutes.

1 cup rice
1/2 lb extra firm tofu
2 tb peanut oil or canola oil
1/4 cup of sliced onion
1 tb. minced garlic
5-6 sliced radishes
1 whole carrot, julienned (cut into little matchstick-sized pieces)
1/2 cup frozen mukimame or edamame
1/2 cup of Nestle Asian style sauce or other spicy peanut sauce
Romaine lettuce leaves

1. Cook rice, according to package directions.
2. While rice is cooking, press tofu between several layers of paper towels. Put something heavy on top of it, like a large book, to press the excess water out. Leave this for about 2 minutes.
3. Cut tofu into medallions about 1/2" thick and 1 1/2" long.
4. Fry in a wok or frying pan with oil on medium-high heat til golden brown on both sides, about 4 minutes per side.
5. Add onion, garlic, radishes, carrots and mukimame, tossing constantly, til vegetables become crisp-tender.
6. Stir in sauce and turn heat to medium low (3 on an electric stove). Stir in drained rice.
7. Serve with romaine lettuce leaves.

Let me know if you try it!

Is giftedness a gift?

Here's an interesting article I found online today about the so-called 'curse of the gifted child' - why stellar students sometimes (maybe even often) grow up to be unfocused adults who lack confidence in their own abilities. http://www.utne.com/The-Sweet-Pursuit/When-Smart-Kids-Grow-Up.aspx

The article posits that if, as a child, academic success comes easily, it is hard to deal with it when things don't come as easily, as you view your abilities as innate - either you know a subject, or you don't; you are good at something, or you're not.

What do you think? As a formerly 'gifted' child, this resonated with me. It also perhaps seems (and I'm not saying this is a good way to be, just perhaps something that falls in line with the article) that there is a discouragement in adult life borne of an inherent sense of unfairness when the rate of return for your efforts becomes so much smaller. A sense of 'everything I had to do to be successful was so easy and self-explanatory then. Why is the path to success so much harder to follow now?'

Do you think we set kids up for failure by enrolling them in gifted programs and celebrating their academic success? If this article is accurate, what do you think can be done to deal with this issue?

Cat-egorically funny

Lacking time for a real post tonight, I thought I'd direct you to this website instead. One of its funny cartoons made my day this morning! If you've had a kitten, some of the cartoons may be all too familiar. http://www.simonscat.com/

Nibble, nibble, little mousekin

These gingerbread house sections were made by my ESL childcare kids today - one of our most fun projects ever! Check out the one with the fishpond! I think Erik could grow up to be a chef. He had his mise en place down too, everything very neatly arranged and ready to start. I have such a great group of kids. And that sugar extravaganza didn't make them hyper at all...if you believe that, there's a bridge I'd like to sell you. :)

The Christmas fun continues

Today's cooking endeavour was this plate of cupcakes, rounded out with some gingerbread cookies, for my uncle Leonard's book signing. Today, an important lesson was learned about baking, and that is - if you cannot find your muffin pan, propping all of the cupcake wrappers up in a sheet cake pan and then filling them with batter is not an acceptable substitute. Unless you want your cupcakes to turn into a sheet cake that looks like the surface of the moon. You have been forewarned. Fortunately, cutting the overgrown cupcakes into small squares and putting them back into fresh cupcake papers made decent-ish petit fours, so the day was saved.

Book signing, you ask? Why yes! My uncle, Leonard Urban, just happens to be an author as well, so excuse me while I take the next paragraph or so for some shameless family promotion.

The Millennium Conquest, Leonard's fourth book, is a semi-autobiographical story about a couple who, dealing with a recurring dream peopled by great historical figures, grapple with questions about the inequality and injustice in the world, and their place in it - what they can do, on a personal level, to help alleviate human suffering and make the world a better place.

This book would make an excellent Christmas gift for someone on your list who thinks about these issues. Proceeds from the book will benefit the Sister Mary Alice Murphy Center for Hope, a homeless resource center in Fort Collins, Colorado. Millennium Conquest is available for $14.95 from Ancient Echoes Publishing in Fort Collins. Leonard is also the author of Look What They've Done to My Church, Requiem for a City Church, and Sighs from the Desert.

Lastly, the pipe cleaner candy cane below was made by my daughter - a fun and easy Christmas craft you or your kids may want to try:

Christmas Cookie Goodness

One of the things you realize when you make a cookie recipe that yields 6 dozen is that nobody needs 6 dozen cookies. It's too many to roll out. It's too many to decorate. And it's way too many to eat. Nevertheless, we have gingerbread cookies around here tonight. Boy, do we. And this is what they look like (decorating provided by Bella):

Ten on Thursday

10 Things You Want, But Wouldn't Buy for Yourself (at least not right now)

1. A really nice, fast computer with good graphics. Not that I wouldn't buy it for myself, but at the moment, it's a little out of my league. Does it count as three things if I also wish it would run Quark and Photoshop?

2. A printer for the computer I want, but am not buying.

3. An X-Box 360, PS3 or Wii. I love to play games. (Thing 3.5, many new games for said game player)

4. Just one of Bella's American Girl dolls to have every last accessory you can buy. Both because it would make her happy, and because my secret nine-year-old self would be thrilled. Oops, now I guess it's not so secret anymore.

5. A refrigerator that keeps track of what's inside, suggests recipes, and also tells you the weather. Because they exist. And that is awesome.

http://www.samsung.com/us/topic/apps-on-your-fridge

6. A horse. Where would I keep it? Nevertheless, I've still not entirely gotten over wanting one.

7. $100 shopping spree at The Tattered Cover, in Denver. Three stories of bookstore, one of amazingly good restaurant with a view overlooking the city. One of my favorite places ever.

8. A solar phone charger you don't have to plug in. Very convenient.

9. An ice cube tray that makes tiny Han Solos in carbonite. Don't believe that such a thing exists? Check this out: http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/kitchen/e845/?cpg=ogpla&source=google_pla&gclid=CPzT34Pb4awCFckZQgodzio2og



10. A tartlet pan. On second thought, I could very well buy a tartlet pan. Tiny mincemeat pies would be fun for Christmas. But I have no immediate plans to buy one, so it still counts!

Well, readers? What 10 things do you wish Santa would bring you?

Rosemary and Rue

This is the first book in Seanan McGuire's October Daye series, and I thought I'd bring it to your attention. We are now up to the fourth book, I think, but it's no good bringing the fourth book in a series to anyone's attention - if you already like the series, you know about it already, and if you've never tried it, you're not likely to start with the fourth book. But, Seanan McGuire is one of my favorite authors, and as I promised books on this blog, I thought that now would be an opportune time to plug someone I consider one of the most fun and prolific authors writing today.

It is a testament to how incredibly good they are that whenever I read myself to a stopping place in the October Daye series (i.e. the last published book - so that I have to wait for McGuire's writing to catch up with my reading), the world becomes a sadder place. Patience is never my strong suit.

I began reading the series largely because I love the Newsflesh series so much (first book is Feed, by Mira Grant, McGuire's pseudonym). I am now hooked into this one as well, though to a lesser extent. Toby Daye's world is reminiscint of Charles De Lint's, with more of an emphasis on Celtic folklore and more believable, multi-dimensional characters. Toby is a faery knight cum private investigator, and she never runs out of crimes to solve, thanks to the faery-world's Macchiavellian royal court system and abundance of shady characters. There is a lot of backstory that is revealed in tantalizing little bits - and even more, the further you get into the series. McGuire has said on occasion, on her blog, or in interviews, that she admires Stephen King, and I can see it. As a would-be writer myself, I admire her, because she's learned a lot of King's tricks without copying him in any way. She is very much her own voice. This is a smart fantasy book series, and I think you all should read it.

I also think you should read Feed. But that is another post for another time.

An Advent-itious post

It may not be quite time for this picture yet, but it is time to start thinking about Christmas - or at least about Advent - that time of year when we start thinking about thinking about Christmas! So, for today's post, I thought I'd give you a collection of what I consider to be some of the most fun Advent calendars out there this year, to get you in the Christmas spirit in these upcoming weeks!

The first one is an Advent calendar, the kind with fun activities for each day. You can find it online at Smart Martha's blog at http://smartmartha.com/Documents/AdventCalendar.pub.pdf
My daughter and I will be starting the activities tomorrow. A few days late this year, but better late than never, right?

Or, in case you would prefer your Advent calendar online: http://www.smmp.com/Advent/Advent.php
http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/Advent/Advent-Calendar.aspx
http://www.teachingmom.com/features/advent.html (This one gets my vote, hands down! It is chock-full of book and movie suggestions, information about how Christmas is celebrated in other countries, games, recipes, and all the holiday fun your little heart could desire, all in one convenient spot.)

And here is a neat one from Allrecipes - a cookie calendar. It's actually from 2007, but last time I checked, December has 24 days before Christmas every year, so that shouldn't really be an issue: http://allrecipes.com/HowTo/Christmas-Cookie-Countdown-2007/Detail.aspx

And you can never, never, go wrong with the kind that is filled with chocolate: http://www.candywarehouse.com/adventcalendar.html

How about you? Do you use an Advent calendar? Do you have any neat holiday website suggestions?

Fun for the whole family

Today I thought I'd share with you a few of my family's favorite fun websites (Wow, am I good with the alliteration today, or what?)

www.sporcle.com is a quiz game website. Quizzes are mostly timed, and range from the obscure - name all the top 10 boys' names starting with 'M' from each decade between 1890 and 2010, to the relatively easy - what four things did Snoopy serve for Thanksgiving dinner in the classic special? If you have a spare ten minutes and want to have a good time with your kids, this is a good bet, especially if one of you is a fast typist. Seriously, if you are a quick thinker and a slow typer, I can't think of any single website that would be more frustrating.

The other fun website is called Akinator, and you can get to it by going to www.akinator.com. Akinator is a genie who plays 20 Questions, and he is uncannily good at guessing any character you can come up with, from your yoga teacher to Fringe's Walternate, to Aeschylus.



What are your favorite game websites?

10 (Not) on Thursday

And because I missed it yesterday, here is my belated list for the day!

10 Things You Wish You Knew How to Do

1. Change the oil in my car. Think of all the money I would save! But alas, I can't even change a tire. Maybe I shouldn't admit that?

2. Speak 5 languages. Hey, Queen Elizabeth I could. And Rosetta Stone hadn't even been invented in her day. So far, I'm up to: English, French, the Spanish level of a 2-year-old, and a random smattering of words in other languages including Italian, Russian and Portuguese.

3. Get my daughter to be polite all the time, and never eat too many sweets. (Did I say this was a realistic list?)

4. Make cannolis. I have a cannoli mold now, since my birthday. I'm halfway there!

5. Fly a plane. Someday, I will! Probably the most expensive thing on this list though.

6. Play the piano very well. Practice would help with this, I'm sure.

7. Sew. Again, would be so cost-effective. Or at least make me feel like we, as a society, aren't losing all of our skills as we give all of the knowledge and power over to companies who do everything for us.

8. Create an iPhone app game. I have a good idea for one. Or at least one I would like to play.

9. Fix broken computers and appliances. See #1 and #7.

10. Motivate myself to work on some of the many things I would like to know how to do every day, so I'm not just all talk!

How about you, blog reader? I'm dying to know what you would like to know how to do!

Using our noggins

Ok, that's a bad title, but what else do you call a post about eggnog? We had a lot of great Thanksgiving food yesterday - and thanks to a few vegans in the crowd, both a turkey and a tofurkey. (The turkey is better, but for some reason you can eat more tofurkey than turkey. Maybe because soy products are less filling than meat?). But the real standout recipe of the day was this incredibly fast and easy recipe for vegan eggnog. I am giving it to you, because it's the kind of thing that you'll be able to use more than a few times this holiday season.

Quick Eggless Nog

1 cup vanilla almond milk
1 tablespoon sugar
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg.
Per cup.

In a cup or pitcher, depending on how much you'd like to make, stir everything together. Drink up and enjoy!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today we've been a little busy around here with lots of company, a little hot core power yoga, and LOTS OF FOOD! I'll have more to say tomorrow, but for now, wherever you are, I hope that today you got to enjoy a good meal with good friends.

TV night

We're watching Spanish Muzzy around here tonight. I didn't realize there wouldn't be any subtitles! I should get the book, but it's across the room and Bella's falling asleep on my lap. She's so sweet when she sleeps. ;) I am gratified to find that I already understand most of it anyway, though.

Buenas noches, blog readers.

Not made from real Girl Scouts

This recipe was a big hit at Bella's Girl Scout meeting, and now I am sharing it with you. It's one of my favorites, especially around Christmas, which we all know is coming up!

Chocolate Crinkles

2 cups sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 oz, unsweetened baking chocolate, melted (the microwave works well for this - directions should be on the back of the package)
4 eggs
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup powdered sugar

1. Mix sugar, oil, vanilla and chocolate in large bowl. Mix in eggs, one at a time. Stir in flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover and refrigerate at least 3 hours.
2. Heat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
3. Drop small, slightly smaller than ping pong ball-size balls of dough by teaspoonfuls into powdered sugar, roll around to coat. Place about 2 inches apart on a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper or greased foil.
4. Bake 12 minutes or until almost no indentation remains when touched.

70 calories, 10 carbohydrates per cookie

That's the recipe I used, with one exception. Here is a test for you. Read that recipe again and tell me, which is the most important sentence in the whole thing?

Did you catch it? I didn't. Here it is: Cover and refrigerate at least 3 hours. Just what you don't want to see one hour before your daughter's troop meeting. Lucky for me, 1/2 hour in the freezer appears to approximately equal 3 hours in the fridge. So, if you're looking to save time...

This recipe was a big hit with the girls, and with the rest of my family when we got home!

Our whole universe was in a hot, dense state

And to change the subject entirely, I thought I'd use tonight to plug one of my favorite shows - The Big Bang Theory. I'm not a natural comedy watcher, or at least not as a loyal fan. But this show has won me over in record time (I know, it's been on at least two seasons now, but I hadn't seen it until last month.) It is endearing in many ways, including:

1. Its theme song is performed by The Barenaked Ladies. Hey guys! I wondered what you had been up to the past few years. Welcome back!

2. All of my friends act like the characters on this show. I think that's all I'll say about this one.

3. This may be the main reason I find this show side-splittingly hilarious every time I watch.

Perhaps I'm really showing my geek side here, but I love this show! Have you seen it? What do you think?

Worth a thousand words

So, I've been taking some pictures today, and it occurred to me that it might be fun/worthwhile to show you a few pictures and mention a few of my favorite online photo sites. I like photography, because it lets you see things that you might overlook. I feel like the best pictures I've taken have maybe done that. They did for me, anyway, as I was taking them.

Here's one of the first decent pictures I took, of an elephant at the Columbus Zoo:



As I looked at this photo later, it reminded me a little of those pictures you see of people in the Great Depression. He's stuck behind the electric fence, and surely he isn't too happy, or he wouldn't spend his time throwing straw on his back. I think zoos do a lot of good work, saving endangered species, educating the public...but looking at this elephant made me realize why some people think they're more of a danger than a help.

I also like this picture - it might take a few tries to spot the butterfly:



And now on to good websites - these pictures, I've put up at a very interesting website - www.momentile.com

Momentile's front page says, "Tell a tale without ever saying a word, one photo at a time."Its users (including me, when the spirit strikes) do just that, uploading no more than one photo a day as a 'tile', available for all other site users to see. If you like someone else's, you can save it to view later, or follow that person to see what photos they post next.

Another site I hope you've all looked at by now is Google Earth (www.google.com/earth)Not a website per se, but free software for your computer or mobile phone. You can browse the globe and see photos from all over. Ever wonder what it looks like in Lebanon? The middle of the Amazon rain forest? Cleveland? Wonder no longer. Someone has been there before you, and Google has the photos that they took. Too cool.

Well, that's my 2 cents for the day. What are your favorite photograpy websites?

The Results Are In

So here we have it - our chocolate eclairs, in person. The above photo will illustrate why this is not, in fact, a good potluck recipe. Because that's all there is. Minus the one I ate. Hey, it was for research! There were also a few things that came to light while making the recipe:

1. We only had one cup of milk left, so I substituted vanilla almond milk for the other cup. Worked just as well - maybe even better - but I did have to let it boil for another two minutes, because almond milk appears not to set up as fast.

2. If you use aluminum foil, hoping to save the $4 on parchment paper, some of your eclairs may stick to the pan. I solved this by putting two together to create one, which makes it giant, puffy and decadent. I could see this either being a good or bad thing, depending on your mood. Not so good for potlucks, though.

3. The recipe says to add 1 to 2 tablespoons of hot water to make the chocolate frosting. I don't know whether this is humidity/altitude related, because of living in Colorado, but I added four, and I'm still not sure it couldn't have done with another. Easy spreading was not its forte.

They are exceptionally yummy though. I'm not sure I'd make them again for a while - too labor intensive for the quantity of end result. But I think they were at least a small success. Much tastier than a long john from the doughnut shop!

Chocolate Eclairs

Tomorrow I'm going to be going to a potluck, a sort of kick-off-the-holiday-season thing, so I thought I'd use today to do a little advance scouting for yummy potluck recipes. And the one that I've settled on is this:

Chocolate Eclairs:

For Pastry:
1 cup water
1/2 cup stick margarine or butter
1 cup flour
4 large eggs

For Filling:
1/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 cups milk
2 large egg yolks, slightly beaten
2 tablespoons margarine or butter, softened (5 seconds in the microwave if you don't remember to set it out beforehand)
2 teaspoons vanilla

For Chocolate Frosting:
1 oz unsweetened baking chocolate
1 teaspoon stick margarine or butter
1 cup powdered sugar
1 to 2 tablespoons hot water

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Heat water and margarine to rolling boil in 2 1/2 quart saucepan. Stir in flour; reduce heat to low. Stir vigorously over low heat about 1 minute or until mixture forms a ball; remove from heat.
3. Beat in eggs all at once, continue beating until smooth. Shape scant 1/4 cupfuls of dough into fingers about 4 1/2" long by 1 1/2" wide using spatula. Place about 3 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet covered with parchment paper.
4. Bake 35 to 40 minutes, or until puffy and golden. While they're baking, make the Cream Filling and Chocolate Frosting. Cool. Cut off top third of each puff and pull out any strands of soft dough. Eat them. Or throw them away, whichever you prefer. But I know which one I'll be doing.
5. Fill puffs with Cream Filling, replace tops.
6. Frost with Chocolate Frosting. Cover and refrigerate until serving. Refrigerate any leftovers. Hopefully, there won't be any leftovers!

Cream Filling:
Mix sugar, cornstarch and salt in medium to large saucepan. Gradually stir in milk. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens and boils. Boil and stir 1 minute. Gradually stir at least half of the hot mixture into egg yolks. Stir back into hot mixture in saucepan. Boil and stir 1 minute; remove from heat. Stir in margarine and vanilla. Cool.

Frosting:
Melt chocolate and margarine in small saucepan over low heat, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and stir in powdered sugar and water. Beat until smooth and spreadable.

* I'm going to be trying this one tomorrow morning, so I'll let you know how it turns out. If anyone else tries it too, I'd love to know how it works for you! Or any of your other favorite sweet potluck recipes.

I also solved a small culinary mystery this morning - the difference between the eclair and the profiterole. It looks like it's all in the shape. Eclairs are long; profiteroles are round, like regular cream puffs with chocolate on top. Which is your favorite?

Ten on Thursday

Today I thought I'd try a blog meme, since the chance to answer silly quiz questions is really 1/10th the fun of having a blog. I found a neat list of memes on this website: www.profitablemommyblogging.com/have-fun-with-blog-memes

Unfortunately, Thursday appears to be an off-day in the world of blogging memes. So I thought, why be constrained by day of the week - a Tuesday meme will do just as well. And that leads me to the questions posed by this site: www.yanowhatimean.com/tuesday

It hasn't been updated in quite a while, but there are plenty of questions regardless. So as to be seasonal, I've gone with a November set, which leads me to today's 10:

10 Things to Be Thankful For

1. The internet. Blogging is fun. Reading other websites is fun. Stay tuned today for a list of my favorites.

2. My family - particularly my daughter, Bella, my dad and stepmom, and brother, Jack. I feel blessed right now that we're all in such close proximity to one another, after a long period of Bella and I living on our own and quite far away.

3. Good friends - unfortunately, most of these we have traded chances to see for the close family, after leaving them on the other side of the country. But, thanks to #1, still able to keep in touch!

4. Story in all its forms - movies, books - and especially for those privileged days when you think of one yourself, rather than simply taking in others'. The boundless capacity for a story to entertain you and make you think - make you see more of the world around you.

5. Insulin. My daughter has diabetes, so without it...well, for as much as I would love a good jaunt in a time machine, I am grateful that we were born in this time, and not 100 years earlier. And that it comes conveniently dispensed in a nice pink pump, and not through a glass syringe that we have to boil and reuse.

6. Free information. Primarily a function of #1, the public library, and you know, crazy old-fashioned things like talking to one another. But I am grateful that in this time and this place, we seem to enjoy an unprecedented historical capability for learning and communicating as a culture.

7. Our church. Because no matter where you move, you know that once you find a good church, you've found a home again.

8. Food. Particularly chocolate, sushi, Nutella, and Indian food. Also things you make yourself. There's something really satisfying about baking - like a magic trick, taking lots of disparate elements and combining them together into something beautiful and tasty, if you're lucky.

9. Our pets, Solo, Obi, and Zeus. Picture of at least one forthcoming.

10. This blog has had a few readers already! And I know that at least three of them were not me or anyone I know. Hello, out there! Happy Thursday!

Well, readers, how about you? What are you thankful for?

Food, glorious food

I was idly searching the Internet, looking for a good new blog post idea just now, when I came across a book entitled No One Cares What You Had For Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog. Usefulness of the book aside, I have to say - that title is simply untrue. I care what you had for lunch. Especially if it was fabulous or awful, or you'd like to share a recipe. I care so much, in fact, that I have been drawn to blogs entirely on the basis of this. And I own lots of foodie apps, like Urbanspoon, Nigella Lawson's app, and Foodspotting. I wanted to back this up with a picture of my lunch, but alas, the only picture of food on my phone is this excellent birthday cake made by my mother.

Contradictions

Today I'd like to talk about contradiction. This was originally inspired by a Google+ post by a friend of mine, who often comments on political issues. Lately, he's had a lot to say about the new proposed SOPA and Protect IP bills. He linked to this page: http://boingboing.net/2011/11/11/stop-sopa-save-the-internet.html

Though I love my friend dearly and respect his opinion, I think a combination of fatalism and an 'oh, it will all be ok' feeling keep me from achieving quite his level of "We must tell everyone!" outrage, especially when I hear about things from a less-than mainstream media source. So, here's what wikipedia has to say: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_IP_Act

And the Atlantic Monthly: http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/248573/

It's obviously censorship. For a nation that purports to hate censorship, we certainly do toy with it all too often. But - contradictions.

As I stood in the shower (sorry, too much information? - at any rate, as I went about my morning routine) pondering my friend's post, and why, if it concerns me so much, I'm not writing a letter to my congressman - why I can read his Occupy Wall Street posts with equal interest and not the slightest urge whatsoever to go downtown and Occcupy my own city with the 20-or-so ragtag protesters who are currently doing it. And I think a lot of my ambivalence stems from the fact that it would then put me in a box.

You see, we've become a nation of boxes. I wouldn't be me anymore, Annie, free to take whichever side of a debate I choose. I would be a LIBERAL. And I wouldn't fit in with the liberals either. Everything is either black or white, and I feel like I'm nothing of the sort. For instance:

I'm a Catholic who believes that, while no one should be forced to have a child against their will, there ought to be another option. Specifically, if you feel you cannot raise a child, it should be just as economically feasible for the government/an agency/the same types of groups who sponsor abortions now to pay you a living stipend while you have a child, and then find someone to adopt. Many people want babies. Many people don't, but have them anyway. Let's get these groups together, so everyone will be happy. I also believe that most people know what unborn babies look like, so showing them pictures of fetuses accomplishes absolutely nothing for one side or the other. It just makes people mad/righteously angry, whichever applies.

I believe you should have the right to worship whoever you choose, be it God, Allah, the goddess or Ganesh. This includes wearing headscarves and religious symbols, but does not include getting angry when others don't want to join you. Again, getting angry accomplishes nothing. Setting a good example does.

Yet, I believe that I had good reasons to choose a Catholic church and don't see how my conceding that you might not be wrong makes me any less right. Isn't faith supposed to be a mystery? Maybe that's the trouble. Mystery went the way of compromise, to make room for two groups of people on different sides of a fence, each convinced of their own rightness.

I believe that soldiers are brave and self-sacrificing, and deserving of our care packages and support when they come home. And not all wars are unjust. Regardless of how you feel about a war, when you look at a soldier, you are looking at a man (or woman), who felt so strongly about protecting his country, his family, and your family, that he would fly across the world and risk his life to do it. That isn't something you do lightly.

On the other hand, even the most just war can cause destruction that wasn't intended, and more needs to be done to combat this, and to acknowledge it. The longer you keep fighting in one place, the more you grow to view those people as the enemy. I'm not sure what the solution to this is, but it makes me sad to see it.

So you see, if I started protesting now, I would have to choose. You can't hold all of these opinions at once in good company. The moment you start to put your thoughts out there, you are expected to choose: pro-life or pro-choice; pro-war or anti? There are only two camps, which means that you can only hold two sets of opinions - no picking and choosing. I just think if you're going to be pro-life, then you should be pro-life - meaning that as much as possible, people should have the chance to live a good life, with peace, and ample food to eat and places to sleep, and freedom to enjoy it. Why isn't that a position all its own?

For your reading entertainment

Thought I'd start things off with a book review. I know all this mention of vampires and zombies comes a bit late in the year, but what can I say - for the true connoisseur, it's never too late. With that in mind, this week's selection is: Dracula's Guest: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories by Michael Sims.

It's a fun book. I think the most surprising thing about Victorian literature, whenever I read it, is that it's never as dated as I expected it to be. People really are similar, throughout the ages.

There are a few really great stories. I was sure I'd read "The Family of the Vourdalak" quite a few years ago, but I don't think Sims explicitly cited reprint permissions anywhere in the book, so I'm still not completely clear where. At any rate, it was an oldie but goody.

"Varney the Vampire" was completely awful, but that was to be expected. Very like a cheesy silent 'horror' film.

"The Tomb of Sarah" - why is it that if a character comes across something that says, 'For the sake of the dead and the welfare of the living, let this sepulchre remain untouched.', you KNOW, you always know, that it's THAT tomb that they're going to have to move six feet to the left? Predictable mayhem results.

"A True Story of a Vampire" has such a modern beginning. This is the sort of beginning I WISH more modern vampire stories would have. That's the thing that attracts me to the Victorian age, I suppose. Even when they were describing the most unlikely things, often the Victorians seemed grounded. Like they understood life, or expected it to be capable of understanding, in a way we do not, in the dreadful age of postmodernism.

The best stories of the volume, I thought, were "The Deathly Lover" and "Good Lady Ducayne". "The Deathly Lover" had a lot of the romance associated with vampires today - in Anne Rice and Stephenie Meyer and their ilk - while I thought it was refreshing that the vampire herself wasn't sorry for what she was. As the story rightly points out, it's we mortals who feel the vampire ought to be tortured, in body or in soul. Why not be content with your lot?

When I read "Good Lady Ducayne", all I could think of was Jo March from Little Women hiding Lady Audley's Secret, or perhaps some other girl of that era and literary kind. But I could see Jo reading "Good Lady Ducayne", and enjoying it. It was a satisfying little tale with a happy ending, though not, strictly speaking, a vampire story. MR James' "Count Magnus" was good, as his stories almost always are, and satisfyingly creepy.

"Luella Miller" made me think of ... is it Robinson? -"Whenever Richard Cory went downtown, the people always stopped and looked at him..." that sort of small town fatalism that channels Sherwood Anderson and Faulkner in equal measures. It had such a good beginning, but the ending fell flat.

On the whole, this was a very interesting anthology. A page turner, if anthologies can be. I'm interested to see what else Michael Sims has written. I am at least certain of never being bored by his work.

I believe some introductions are in order

Good evening, and welcome to my humble blog. Please, come closer. Too close! Whew, ok, that's better. So, it's occurred to me lately that I have things to say, and perhaps too few people to which to say them. Or something like that.

There are a few things I enjoy doing, and would enjoy sharing with you. They are:

1. Reading too much, and then posting about it.

2. Cooking.

(Here is a bento box lunch I made for my daughter a while ago.)

3. Taking pictures. (Uploading them, I'm still working on. I had a great one to post here, but my Momentile account, this website, and this computer appear not to agree.)

4. Everything else - watching movies and tv, usually involving monsters, murder, mind control, or things which don't start with 'm', like Joss Whedon or people speaking foreign languages; games - board, role-playing; being the mother of an 8-year-old girl who can read at a junior high school level and has type 1 diabetes.

I also do quite a lot of reviewing at LibraryThing.com, and plan to link to those reviews, or post them here.

And now, I must be off. So little to do, so much time, as a wise man once said.