the emotional life of sølje

Pan of delicious slow roasted romas…
Its hard to believe that when I started these this at noon, the tomatoes filled the pan with no wiggle room. Voila, 8.5hrs later.

I sliced the tomatoes in half, longway. Drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled diced garlic, rosemary, sea salt, and freshly ground pepper. Roasted at 200 for 8+ hours. I have found other recipes that call for other herbs (thyme, oregano, or other Italian herbs). I love Rosemary.

Now to decide if I follow one recipe and let cool and remove skins, or leave them on. I am not really sure how to use these, so I will have to do a little more research
One recipe: kitchenparade.com/2007/08/slow-roasted-tomatoes.php
Another: www.theperfectpantry.com/2006/09/roasted_tomatoe.html

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I swear if I ever have to hear/see the Bob The Builder chant again, it will be too soon.

Onwards and upwards… no matter what, as Kevin keeps reminding me… there is only one larger than any of us–might I add, the only one who will be able to keep all promises.

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Bonnie’s eyes are smiling!

A snail in the mouth… kind of an odd shot

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Happy Fall, everyone! I took some pictures of our Japanese Maple yesterday. This one little leaf was back lit nicely by the sun. I love how it turned out. I wish the photos I took looking up into the tree looked as rich.

I was planning to make a loaf of bread using some Italian sourdough starter, but after the first rise I decided to go a different direction. I haven’t been able to find any directions on making "sourdough" monkey bread, so it was basically a shot in the dark using some other recipes I had found online.

The bread is delicious! Absolutely no "sour" flavor detected (though this Italian starter is pretty mild), and the bread is soft.

The basic recipe is
3.5c flour
1c starter
1c water
2tsp salt

mix, knead, let double. create little balls (abt walnut size), dipped in butter, and tossed with cinnamon sugar. I buttered a pan and added a cin/sugar coating before placing the balls within.

I let the dough rise a second time (abt 2hrs), prepared a brown sugar/butter topping (melted 1/2c butter w/1c brown sugar in a saucepan, let boil for about a minute while constantly stirring, drizzled over the top of dough) and then baked at 350-375 for 35 mins.

I am positive that there are hardly any calories in this bread whatsoever

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We went to the South 47 Farm today to pick our pumpkins. Every year more and more people show up. I guess its good for the farm, but it was once less crowded for our own convenience. I checked out the produce, but for the most part our weekly CSA share has everything we need. I had briefly thought of getting some pumpkins for making a pie (winter something pumpkin? can’t remember the name… seems like “silky” was in the name), but when it came time to buy our pumpkins, Darrin was grumpy that we weren’t letting him push the “pumpkin barrow” around (sorry guy in front of us who’s heels we clipped… oops), so I let Kev do the deed and I took the boys over to see the animals.

Like last year, the weather was perfect. Sunny and blue skies. We definitely chose the right weekend! Daniel is going to be Harry Potter for Halloween. We bought the costume stuff yesterday, and today he wore his glasses to the pumpkin farm… Can’t wait until he’s 20 and I can say, “Remember when you wore HP glasses to the pumpkin farm?”. He’ll love me for it.

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Because I haven’t been able to reach a link to contact my congressman (house.gov isn’t loading for me, and the cached site for contacting my rep won’t send the email), I found this site which is like a one-stop shop for sending out your thoughts: http://www.congress.org/ For a fee, you can also have your letter hand delivered, and there are several letters on current topics that you can use/work from if you aren’t sure how to word your thoughts.

All I know is, that “We just wanted to choose a really large number.” (Treasury spokesperson on how they came to a 700bil number) is NOT the way I want to see a problem worked.

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I think I am back up to about 80% on my laptop again. A second round of hard drives arrived today, and the backup from June 2007 was implemented. So far I have all my financial stuff back in order with all years accounted for, but I am missing a year’s worth of pictures/video that I had. So, half of Darrin’s life was gone in a blink. Kevin tried to get in to the dead drive to save something, but it failed. I still need to update a few more things, but the important stuff is back again.

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This is a public service announcement: Back up all your pictures and financial data, as well as anything else you treasure. Guess who’s hard drive is now toast? Sigh. At least I have my old Toshiba while a new hard drive is being ordered, but in the meantime, I have lost a lot of data (pictures and my quicken stuff) and the last backup date was June 2007.

So anyway… tonight will be spent trying to get quicken up to date the best I can and go from there.

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Daniel’s 1st day of 3rd grade. Do you think he’ll let me do this through 12th grade? I have high hopes for a successful year.

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I have very bushy tomato plants, that’s the plus. I have a bunch of green tomatoes, that’s a plus and negative. I hear that many people in my area ended up with no ripe tomatoes this summer, thanks to our cool and wet weather we’ve been having. I have a lot of Viva Italia tomatoes, and only three Brandwines. I am not even discussing the tomatoes that the birds have found and been nibbling on, or the ones that have fallen off their vines. I am disappointed in the outcome, but I will try again next year. I have been reading tips about getting the tomatoes to ripen… we’ll see.

Fried green tomatoes, anyone?

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Today I worked on a baby quilt. A couple of days ago I wanted to start a quilt for one of Kevin’s co-workers that will be blessed in about two weeks through adoption. Kevin and I are excited for them, and we got to hear all the ups and downs through their process. We recommended the agency we went through to adopt Darrin, and were thrilled when they chose it. I’d hoped they’d get our worker, but they were matched with a different person. Oh well, can’t have it all Kev was told that the baby (actually he’s a 2yo) loves baseball so I decided to pick out something “baseball” from my stash. However… that’s as far as I got and I couldn’t think of a pattern to do. I haven’t quilted since the WASIQ retreat, and my room was buried under things that had been set in there (my quilt room ends up being a “catch-all” room), so yesterday was a mucking out day. I asked on the WASIQ list about what fallback patterns were popular and easy. The pattern that was mentioned the most was Warm Wishes.

True enough, the quilt was very easy and quick. I think I worked on it for two hours at the most this afternoon. I used muslin and two Fairy Frost fabrics that I had in my stash. The color seems to lean “warm” in the picture, but the muslin is white.

And to prove that I am not just a top maker, I will be quilting it tomorrow

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Why would anyone say such a thing? Politics are sure nasty, aren’t they? I really wonder about people today. I see someone I knew call Republicans a nasty name (along with evil), and I hear the same from others in the opposite party. Why does our country have to be like this???? Why do people have to lump everyone into a them and us, and if you are a “them”, you are then “evil”. *enter swear word here* I am sick of they way people are. We are all just people. And, though I have a party preference I don’t believe that our lives will change enormously if my party loses. Read about some of the secret societies that our people in government belong to. They are the ones who truly have their hands in the pot. We are only puppets. Enjoy the youtube video below. Be proud of the people who are supporting your party–whichever it may be, because right now I see a lot of dispicable behavior at the benefit of people who are currently evacuating their homes three years following the last major hurricane.

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I don’t have much to blog, but thought I would at least check in with a post. I am trying to make changes to my inactive lifestyle, I have much to live for and want to be around to see it Kevin has been a bicycling fiend lately, and I have made it a goal that to be able to ride with him. I refuse to put my rearend on a bike seat just yet, but I do have the goal and am working towards it.

My 2007 Journal Quilt is a pefect example of this. How many diets has a single person been on in a lifetime? For me, many. I think an average gain of 10lbs with each one. So, I bought Bob Greene’s book and daily journal (advertisement time… for about $20 total at amazon! Send adv $$ my way please! LOL!), read it through the weekend (leading up to phase one), and began on Monday (uh, like I would start on a different day?) So the goal with phase one is moving more. That is what I am doing, dusting off the treadmill and walking everyday so far. I hope it gets easier and I “crave” doing it (what I hear so much from people who’ve been exercising).

Back to biking… Its a good thing Kevin has been riding to work on his bike (and now used to the travel), because his truck is currently in the shop right now getting some major repairs done on the engine. Could have been worse of course, so “it is good we brought it in now” they say. I am pretty impressed with his riding up our hill home though.

So that’s how the last few weeks have been in a nutshell. I hope to get back to creating and sewing again soon. I did make an awesome carrot cake a couple of weeks ago. That may go against this diet I should be working on though.

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I only answer the phone before 7:30ish AM if I see Kevin’s number on the ID, or an emergency services number. I know it must be something big if anyone dares to call that early–at least it better be.

Today, after another bout of early morning Florida Health Care phone calls, I have pin pointed WHY my number keeps getting called. When we began the adoption process for the second time, we were considering going through Lifetime Adoptions, out of California, who is basically a matching agency. Hopeful adoptive parents create an 800 number for interest and connection if one of the potential birthparents decide to contact us.

Today I asked the last caller what the number was that they were trying to call. It sounded familiar. I tried calling it and got the message that the person I was trying to contact was not available followed by a busy signal. So, I decided to find the link to our 800 number. Voila! Next, I googled Florida Health Care along with “mail order” as it seems to be connected. Sure enough, there is our 800 number–except it’s a local number. The people who are calling what should be the local number are adding the 800 instead of the area coade in front of the 7-digit number.

So what do I do now? Endure the EARLY morning phone calls till the last $40 runs out (its based on a 3cent per minute price, and we purchase x-amount of dollars. It can be automatically recharged, but I declined that), or cancel? I have been searching in vain to find the cancel section, but surprise! It appears that cancelling does not exist. ugh.

Any thoughts on what I should have the 800 number ring to? Perhaps I should tell Kev’s older boys to call more often on our dime until the thing runs out. That could be quick, but the thought of dealing with early morning phone calls until then does not sound attractive.

Case solved. What a PIA.

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I received a lavender order from Labyrinth Hill and I didn’t even have to see who it was from to know where it came from… the yummy scent gave it all away In the order was a how-to-care pamphlet, and directions for making a lavender wand. Never having made them before, I decided to give it a try. Being a visual learner, I had to go to the website to view the pictures: Directions Here I made two since I received my lavender bundles wrapped in a pretty lavender ribbon (and you thought it’d be a yellow ribbon?) As you can see in the pic below, I just couldn’t stop weaving at the bottom of the flowers… it was a bit addicting!

I gifted the magical lavender wands to two girls that live behind us that Daniel plays with often.

On the dog front, I go to pick Bonnie up in an hour or so (she had surgery to remove it this morning). I’ll find out next week what the growth was.

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