I seriously love photography. When I believed my camera to be dead, I was adamant that I would have a DSLR back in my hands within one day, dip-into-savings be damned (and I don’t take $$ out of savings without a fight). I think my favorite thing about it, besides the obvious memory-making aspect is the fact that it’s a continuous learning process.
I had my DSLR for years before I really dug into how to use it. Most of the time the sheer speed of the DSLR was more than enough for me to use it and Matt has a pretty good background in the technical aspects of photography so whenever I wanted to achieve a certain effect, he was my cheat sheet. He’d tell me to do this or that and I’d do it and generally it would work, but I didn’t really know why.
That was fine for a long time since I was busy raising the kids and just wanted to take some photos already!! But I did finally get a wonderful little book that somehow made all the stuff I sort of knew, in theory anyhow, really crystallize. It’s got a bit too much on shooting with film, something I have no time for or interest in, but otherwise it’s a great book. I have not switched over to shooting fully in Manual mode … my main subjects are the kids and I’m not good with speed in manual mode, but at least I know now when I need to and I’m comfortable enough to switch over and set things as I need to get what I want. Like awesome blurred waterfalls.
There are only about 100000 more things I want to learn and hopefully will over time.
One of the simplest weeknight dinners I make is a pan of scrambled eggs. I season/flavor them with whatever’s on hand: cream cheese and some dill, smoked salmon, leftover bacon, salsa, spinach and feta, ham and swiss and mushrooms. They are always a hit with the kids.
And whenever I do that I like to have some sort of lightly sweet baked good to go along with the meal. Sometimes it’s two-bite cinnamon rolls from Costco or just toast with jam, but likely as not, I make homemade muffins. I have used tons of recipes, but these are my go-to muffins that are perfect for using up any fresh fruit that’s getting past its prime or the tail-end of a frozen bag of fruit.
Ingredients
3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour (you can do all one type if you like)
2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1/2 C sugar
1/3 C natural applesauce
1 egg
~ 1/3 C milk
1 T oil
1 cup chopped fruit or a bit more if you’ve got it
spices to compliment your fruit
Note about fruit/spices: this is a great recipe for doing your favorite or using what you have. I’ve done blueberries with just a little vanilla extract, blueberries with some lemon zest and peaches with cinnamon, allspice and cloves. I think these would be wonderful with apples and/or raisins and cinnamon or anything else you fancy.
Directions
Heat your oven to 400. Place liners in a muffin pan – this recipe seems to make between 10 and 15 muffins depending on how much fruit you use and how generous you are when putting batter in the muffin tins.
In a bowl, combine flour, salt, baking powder and sugar. In a 1 cup measuring cup, add the applesauce, oil and egg. Add enough milk to go to the 1 cup line and stir. Pour this into your dry ingredients along with any spices you’re using and stir until combined, but do not over-mix. Carefully fold in your chopped fruit.
Pour batter into prepared muffin cups. I like to do 2/3 to 3/4 full though the original recipe calls for filling them to the top! Bake for 18-25 minutes or until just browning on top.
My maternal grandpa’s family has family reunions every 2 years. We flip-flop between a location in the Rockies (near us) and a location in Missouri (near the other branches of family). They started when I was a baby and have been going strong for 30 years. I have been to almost all of them. My mom and a few others, every one.
This year’s family reunion was on the schedule as one of our bi-weekly weekend trips. It was the last weekend in July, or so the calendar said. Friday afternoon, around 3:30, I was at home waiting for a friend of mine and her little girl to arrive for a playdate when my mom called. “I’m sick, Jess,” she said. I figured she was referring to a stomach virus or something that would take her out of commission for Tabby’s beloved Friday Movie Night. But then she went on.
“Reunion is THIS weekend.”
Tabby at Dinner amongst her people
That’s right … the summer of calendar mishaps and idiocy continues. We as a group had collectively gotten it into our heads that reunion was a weekend later than it actually was. Now the reunion was to be held near Warsaw, MO, about 10.5 hours from Denver, or about 2 hours from the nearest airport if you could get yourself on a plane. But of course, a quick check of flights revealed that it was both cost-prohibitive and a scheduling nightmare.
We were all really bummed. We only get to see our extended family in short spells every once in a while. It’s not that we can’t see them at other times but there’s a pretty large contingent and so a reunion is excellent visiting value. Beyond that you hate to miss out on something that’s part of the collective group’s history. So we started scheming. The biggest hurdle was my grandma. She has perfect reunion attendance and we were very much looking forward to bringing her with us, but at 88 years old she has a walker and is on full-time oxygen. Between the combination of the two (well not the walker so much as the reasons for the walker) we simply couldn’t figure out any way to get her to the reunion in time.
Once we came to terms with that, we assessed whether or not the rest of us should/could go. Ultimately we decided we could … and we would. So playdate over (all this transpired in phone calls and mom coming to my house in about an hour as the playdate was going on), I set the land-speed record for packing and got us ready to go in about half an hour. Trip all over I can say in all honesty that I did an excellent job. The only thing I forgot was a swim-diaper for Ben.
We met up at my mom’s house and piled clown-car style into my mom’s SUV, using up 6 of 7 seats. My dad was off fishing in Wyoming with a buddy and we had no way to get in touch with him and so left him fishing. We left at 6:30 pm on Friday and made it to Salina, KS and a very nice Courtyard Marriot by 2:15 AM. After a paltry 3-4 hours of sleep, we left Salina by 7 AM the next morning and made it to “Camp” by 11 AM.
Reunion was what reunion always is, organized chaos. People in the lake and pool, people in the meeting room, mixer games, awesome group meals, playing games ’til way too late, lots of fun and laughs and photo-taking. My kids got to meet their age-mates, 5th or 6th cousins (had to sketch out a partial family tree on some scratch paper to figure that out) that are the children of my age-mates. My kids slept in a queen
Lil' Skipper
(double?) bed with my mom and Matt and I shared a twin bed. Sleep was scanty and light, but that’s hardly the point.
We learned that it was definitely worth the effort. And we were very glad we went. Unfortunately, we still had to drive across Kansas once more.
Even this fairly blurry camera phone pic is worth 1000 words. Sweet baby girl has taken to sleeping on her floor in a little nest made of all of her blankies (there are MANY). Loki sometimes joins her. Matt asked her why and she says it’s “more comfortable.”
So I’m wondering if it’s softer/nicer down there (and maybe we should think about getting her an even bigger girl bed) or if it’s just cooler (it’s been crazy hot here, just like everywhere else). We need to move Ben into a big boy bed before too long, so maybe it’s time.
So I didn’t tell you the funnest part of our Saturday hiking adventure. Our camera died (well not really but read on). We were pretty much at the turn-around point of the hike and I noticed the low battery notification. Usually you have a bit more juice and so I kept snapping away. All of a sudden the camera was dead. Normally you at least see the indicator lights and some read-outs on the console but I had NOTHING. So I figured the battery just really died. We got back to the condo and I pop the card in the reader and also got NOTHING. Tried my mom’s camera. NOTHING. Then I put a new battery in the camera and tried Mom’s card in my camera and NOTHING. I was getting pretty panicky at this point, thinking the camera AND the card died.
Matt did figure out later that the battery I used wasn’t charged enough and the camera itself is fine. But the card seems to have died … and took all the lovely hiking photos with it. Happily, Kelly got a few on her point-and-shoot, but I took tons more of the kids that I want. We’re getting another card-reader just in case, but if that doesn’t work, these fine folks in FL will be attempting to recover my photos. OY.
Happy Ending Update: The new card-reader arrived early (wasn’t supposed to arrive until late Weds after this was posted) and happily, the card was readable and we got all but the last photo (it seems to have died mid-write).
So. In addition to needing a new card, card reader and/or data recovery services for our camera, my long-lived MP3 player, an awesome Creative Zen Vision: M that they do NOT make anymore is gasping its last breaths. Sucker has lasted me for years and I have not been kind to it. I use it daily, frequently for hours at a time. I have dropped it more times than you can imagine. In other words, it owes me nothing! And yet it has been trucking along. Even still it’s not dead. It is having weird power surges and doesn’t turn off/on predictably. And then it sometimes decided to re-build its library randomly, a 3-5 minute process. Irritating.
A bit part of me says I should just go ahead and drink the kool-aid and buy an ipod. They hook up to the gym’s treadmills. They have TONS of accessories. They are what all the cool kids have. But I can’t quite bite. I’ve really loved my Zen and I do not want to deal with iTunes for data transfer. I just want to load folders of music and books without having to load Apple’s bloatware. So now I’m debating between sticking with Creative and getting a Zen Style or a Zen Mozaic or going with a Sansa Fuze (Sansa makes the awesome Clip players I use for running). Decisions decisions.
I’m trying to get by this week without having to go to the grocery store. We’ll see if I can make it.
Here’s what I’m planning. We have 2 lbs of ground beef leftover from the weekend (ended up not making dinner on Sat night after our hike), and a bunch of other random stuff in the freezer so:
last night we decided to go to the pool, so I made up a bunch of sandwiches and raided the pantry for chips/crackers and unloaded the fridge of a bunch of fruit
tonight (tuesday) will be: pasta primavera (mushrooms and summer squash) with meat
for wednesday: burritos (tortillas + ground beef + can of beans + cheese)
thursday: scrambled eggs + blueberry muffins (we have a few blueberries that are getting past their prime)
pizza night on Friday … I have all the ingredients for dough; hopefully we can scrounge up toppings!
We also will be harvesting some lettuce from our garden (pre-shredded thanks to the lovely hail we’ve been getting) and raspberries from our alley. They are going gang-busters again and the kids are so excited to pick them. Should make for some pretty good eats this week, I think.
Bear with me, because this is going to be a longish post. But there are pictures! So that makes it quicker, right?
Saturday we went on probably the most beautiful hike I’ve ever done. Hanging Lake is located near Glenwood Canyon about an hour west of Vail. The canyon itself is absolutely breathtaking. The fierce Colorado river runs through cliff walls of variegated red stone that go straight up. This year we have had tons of rain and quite a bit of run-off and the river was crazy high and had some amazing rapids.
To get to the trail head you have to get off the highway and then go back the opposite direction (East) and get off again. The trailhead has very nice facilities including water and bathrooms and vending machines and a big parking lot. The trail itself starts out flat, wide and paved. It’s pretty deceiving.
Man it has been a LONG week. Way long. I started bootcamp this week. This is the third time I’ve done bootcamp and the second time for THIS bootcamp. The last bootcamp was a bit of a joke. It’s was more of a flip-flopcamp than a bootcamp, but this is the real deal. It is hard. Like the work we did on Monday is still making my quads hurt hard. It is expensive too, but very good and very worth it. I’m really happy to be doing it, but it’s taking me some time to get used to. Right now all I want to do is go home and pass out every night. But the family just won’t go for that (although Matt’s been awesome, putting the kids to bed so I can get some early zzzzs).
Anyhow, I am not big on chit chat today, so here are some fun summery links:
neat series on various things you can mail w/o a box or envelope, Happy Mail
Curbly.com is one of my newest favorite sites … they have loads of fun imaginative projects for your home, usually on the cheap, like this great firefly jar
As I posted last week, I was intrigued by the recipe mentioned in the peaches round-up on theKitchn, Honey-Glazed Chicken, Sweet Potato, and Peach Skewers. I picked it as my “must try” recipe for the week (I actually picked another too, couldn’t help myself). We tried this last night and it was a wild success! I will say that this is a bit too much work for me for most week nights. Matt cut and marinated the chicken at lunch and I came straight home and started the rest of the prep and let him pick up the kids. There were also quite a few dishes to do after the meal was over. But the results were worth it – adults and kids agree – and we would definitely do this again, but probably on a weekend.
Ingredients (serves 6)
1.5 lb boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into 24 1 1/2 inch pieces
3/4 C sherry vinegar
1/3 C honey + 1 T
cumin
pumpkin pie seasoning
4 T canola oil, divided
2 med sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 24 1 1/2 inch pieces
1 large sweet onion, peeled and cut into 1 1/2 inch pieces, layers separated
3 lg peaches, pitted and cut into eighths
salt & pepper
1/2 cup chopped pecans
Directions
An hour or few before cooking, toss chicken with 2 T canola oil, 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice, 1 tsp cumin and some salt and pepper. Leave to marinate for a couple of hours.
When dinner time is approaching … Soak 12 twelve-inch skewers in water. Heat gas grill to medium. In a pot with a steamer basket, heat 1 inch of water to boiling. Steam sweet potatoes 10-12 minutes until soft, but not fully cooked.
Heat sherry vinegar in a small sauce pan over high heat. Boil, reducing volume by over half. Stir in honey, 1 T oil, and salt and pepper to your taste. Glaze should be thick enough to coat chicken, but thin enough to brush on easily. Thread skewers with chicken, onions, sweet potatoes and peaches. Reserve half of the glaze and brush kabobs with the remaining half.
Thoroughly oil the grates of the grill. Grill skewers 4-5 minutes covered until well- marked. Meanwhile toss pecans with remaining 1 T oil, 1 tsp cumin, 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice, salt and pepper. Place in foil “dish” and grill along side the chicken skewers, being careful to not burn these. Cook chicken until done and nuts until toasted.
Serve kabobs brushed with remaining glaze and sprinkled with pecans. Swoon.
I seriously love photography. When I believed my camera to be dead, I was adamant that I would have a DSLR back in my hands within one day, dip-into-savings be damned (and I don’t take $$ out of savings without a fight). I think my favorite thing about it, besides the obvious memory-making aspect is the fact that it’s a continuous learning process.
