Uncategorized | Change Is Hard

January 19, 2013
by dawnkinster 13 Comments

Acorn squash soup

Devious squash

I just finished reading Forks Over Knives, a book about eating only plant based foods. It was interesting…but I don’t know if I could give up cheese. Still….several of the recipes looked good, so I headed to the store and picked up some stuff to make the acorn squash soup.

Who knew that peeling 3 acorn squash could be so difficult? The skin is hard! I finally figured out that if I cut the squash into sections along the valley in the rind it was easier to peel. But my fingers are still sore from gripping the vegetable peeler.

Katie was the unintended recipient of several small pieces of squash and peel. She loved both. I don’t know if that was because she doesn’t get people food and she thought this was special or because she really likes squash. Could be she likes squash because I know she loves cabbage, apple, carrots and just about anything else that hits the floor.

The soup has the squash, a sweet potato and carrots plus ground ginger and sage. It’s simmering now.

We’ll see.

January 18, 2013
by dawnkinster 9 Comments

Katie here

Hello everybody!

Hey you guys! I bet you’ve been missing ME. ME ME ME ME ME ME…oh wait. I get carried away sometimes but you know it’s all about me. My Mama has been soooooo busy that I hardly ever see her. And when she comes home from work she’s usually too tired to play. But I make her play anyway. She can’t ignore me….not me! I don’t give up either. I have an endless supply of toys to drop at her feet. And while she’s at work I practice the BIG EYES and sharp whine so that I can make her crazy when she finally shows up.

Guess what? It works! And for the small fee of a few dog biscuits I can teach all of you doggies the skill set. Oh wait. You say you already have that down? Well! Doggies rule!

So anyway….Mama and I are going to do a big dog show this weekend. On Sunday we’re going to try to get our Advanced Rally title! Mama says she’s stressed again. Sigh. I don’t know why she gets like this. It’s just another day to spend watching people and doggies do stuff. I like to go to these, and when we’re in the ring I watch my Mama very carefully. If she can just read all those crazy signs correctly I promise to do what she asks. So it’s all up to her.

Me? I’m just having a good time with my Dad while my Mama is at work. And I’ve been dreaming about Mama and me going camping next spring. It’s almost spring, right? Well it should be. After all I’m the princess…and I decree it’s almost spring!

Cause it’s all about me. Yes it is.

January 16, 2013
by dawnkinster 13 Comments

Looking for sweet potatoes?

Some of you were asking for the recipe for the Cranberry Glazed Sweet Potatoes. So here you go!

3 TBS dry sherry

1/2 Cup orange juice

1/4 Cup maple syrup

1 can whole cranberry sauce

1/4 teaspoon powdered ginger

2 TBS butter

3 pounds sweet potatoes, cooked, peeled and sliced.

Cook the sherry, orange juice, maple syrup, cranberry sauce and ginger over low heat 10 minutes. Stir in the butter until melted. Arrange the sliced, cooked sweet potatoes in a greased 9×13 pan (I use a glass pan) and pour the sauce over them. Bake in 350 degree oven 25 minutes. Servies 6-8.

And here are my notes:

1. I used water instead of sherry because I don’t have any sherry.

2. I used 6 medium sized sweet potatoes, boil them with the skins on till they are just fork tender (they’re going to cook in the oven, so don’t over cook them while boiling). Let them cool, then slice them up. You could cook these the day before and slice them later.

3. I tried this with imitation maple syrup once…it wasn’t as good. Just saying.

4. Probably could use grated fresh ginger, but the powdered stuff is fine.

5. I have also made this totally the day before, including putting the sauce over the potatoes, and just heated it up for the 25 minutes in the oven before company arrives.

6. This also make excellent leftovers! 🙂

Enjoy Karen and everyone else!

January 16, 2013
by dawnkinster 24 Comments

Wordless Wednesday (click on photos to see detail)

January 14, 2013
by dawnkinster 12 Comments

The press conference

I caught a little bit of the Sandy Hook parents’ press conference today, a month after the horrific deaths of their children. I was walking through the living room when I saw them on the television, one of them speaking, the spouse holding the picture, the rest of them sitting behind, holding their own child’s photo. It stopped me cold. They are us.

I’ve stood right where they are, speaking into the cameras. I’ve sat behind the podium holding Dad’s photo. I’ve tried to make America see how important my private pain was, how relevant it was to everyone else. I know their pain and I know the strength they get from that pain. I know that every single parent there wants something, no, demands something good to come from that pain.

Their fight is so similar to ours…they are fighting big money of the NRA while we fight the big money of the ATA. They are individual families just like us, riding the grief roller coaster and fighting a fight so large it seems impossible. But all they are asking is for dialog. They recognize that all guns can’t go away just like we realize that all semi trucks won’t and shouldn’t disappear.

All they want is honest dialog from both sides of the discussion. Honest, nondefensive dialog and some compromise for the good of everyone. That shouldn’t be such a difficult thing to do. For the kids. So that the loss of the kids and their wonderful teachers wasn’t just a waste of humanity. A little honest dialog. It’s not too much to ask.

David Wheeler, whose son Ben was murdered said “What I have recently come to realize is that I am not done being the best parent I can be for Ben.” Exactly Mr. Wheeler. You will always be Ben’s Dad. Always.

And I am not done being the best daughter I can be for my Dad. My siblings and I will never be done being Dad and Mom’s kids. We know we’ve made a difference. That means a lot to me.

I hope and pray that the Sandy Hook parents find that bit of peace too. We can give them that if we pressure our legislature to sit down and talk. Honestly. Open to change. Willing to give a little. And if we can join the dialog too. Let’s listen to the other side. Let’s consider each others beliefs. And lets come to a middle ground for the good of all of us.

And to honor those 26 lives and all the lives lost before. Let’s honor them all. We can do this. We have to do this.

Change is hard.

January 14, 2013
by dawnkinster 17 Comments

Mishmash Monday

Play time!

January 13, 2013
by dawnkinster 14 Comments

Food blogging

Karma challenged us to photograph our meals for a week. You’d think that would be easy, but it turned out to be quite the challenge. Who remembers to photo dinner before shoveling it in after a day at work? So I have, over the course of two weeks, taken photos of some of my more favorite meals. And, because I had a huge family meal right in the middle of the two weeks, you’ll get to see some food that only shows itself once a year. Enjoy!

At the beginning of the challenge we had just cooked a ham, and I was looking for something to do with the leftovers. My cousin suggested escaloped potatoes and they turned out wonderful! I didn’t get a photo of the finished product, but I did them in the crock pot and they were spectacular.

The wine didn’t go into the potatoes…but it was good.

Then later that week I did crock pot stew. See a theme here?

Good on a cold night after a long day.

Then it was time to get ready for the big dinner. Two of my favorite things to make are do ahead mashed potatoes….

Yukon gold, cream cheese & sour cream.

…and orange cranberry sweet potatoes that can also be done the day before. Both just get heated up the day of the meal, leaving you less stressed and more available to your guests.

You’ve got to try this one. Easy and amazing.

But the star of our big meal was the rib roast.

Yummy!

We had a wonderful time, and ate leftovers for a couple of days.

No we don’t eat like this every day!

After that we settled down to more normal meals. I forgot to take pictures of the night we ate hamburgers….or the night we went out to eat at a local eatery and I had chicken with dried Michigan cherries. Or the night we wolfed down a frozen pizza. After I heated it up.

I did remember to document the night we had scrambled eggs…which I thought would be boring, so I added sauteed onions, leftover ham, and cheese. Filling and quick.

Who says eggs are only for breakfast?

And Saturday night we had marinated chicken (you can buy it already marinated or marinate it yourself in Italian dressing for an hour or so), more onions (you can never go wrong with onions!), stuffing bought already prepared from the grocery store (Bob Evans) and peas. Pretty darn good and fast.

No leftovers.

So there you go….a week or so of meals. Oh. What did we have for desert? Well. We definitely didn’t take time to photograph that before we ate it. But it involved chocolate.

Thanks Karma, for making me think more about what we eat. AND for picking a perfect couple of weeks when I was really cooking. Versus any other two week period of the year when you’d see a lot more of this.

Healthy and fast. Perfect.

If anyone wants to recipes to any of this let me know. It’s all easy. Trust me on that.

January 12, 2013
by dawnkinster 11 Comments

Confused weather

People down in Phoenix Arizona are suffering through unusually cold weather with temperatures at night hovering near freezing (32F, 0C). I hear there is snow near Los Angles California and this morning I saw it was -6 degrees F (-21.1 C) in Denver Colorado. Yet here in Michigan we took down our Christmas lights on a balmy 50+F (10 C) afternoon.

Though the sky was overcast and the air felt damp we enjoyed our afternoon of packing away the lights. Normally we are doing this with frozen fingers, bundled up in layers complete with hats and gloves. Or worse, in blowing snow while tromping through drifts up to our knees. We commented as we worked that it felt like we were in midwinter Alabama. And we smiled.

Yet…there is this niggling worry in the back of my mind. Though it’s easier to deal with outdoor winter tasks when it’s warm, it just feels wrong. We had an unusually warm day when we put the lights up this past November too…and now are blessed with an easy dismantling. Something just isn’t right. Maybe I’m feeling unsettled because I just read Barbara Kingsolver’s latest book, “Flight Behavior” which revolves around the warming of our earth and the consequences wrought by barely discernible changes. Maybe it’s because I remember winters as a kid where we dug snow caves and argued about whose turn it was to shovel the sidewalk. So far this winter we’ve only used the snowblower once. I don’t know if we used it all last winter. Don’t get me wrong, part of me is grateful that I’m not driving to work in blizzards or shoveling the driveway. But something just feels wrong.

Now I’ve probably gone and jinxed it, and likely tomorrow’s cold snap will feel more familiar. And I suppose now there will be 6 or more inches of snow falling on Monday just in time for the morning commute. But I think I’d be OK with all of that.

Remind me I said this later on as the winter wears on — won’t you?

January 10, 2013
by dawnkinster 18 Comments

Dancing to the Danzon

Tuesday night was our first band practice since our Christmas concert mid-December. Though it was nice to have the time off, we were all eager to get back to playing again. We are getting ready for a community band festival held at the end of February. This of course makes us more nervous because the audience will be filled with our peers – other community bands, people that know music and will be listening with more critical ears than our family and friends. So we want to have our stuff together. We have six weeks.

On of the pieces we will be playing is “Danzon #2” by Marquez. I had never heard it before, but our director sent an email out during the break letting us know, and telling us that we should go find it online and listen. You can hear it here. It’s almost 10 minutes long but worth the listen/watch. This particular version is done by an orchestra, but we’ll be doing a version for a concert band. I followed along in my music and our version is almost exactly like this one, with a few minor orchestration differences.

Tuesday night it took us 45 minutes to get from the beginning to the end of the piece. We stopped and started a lot but some sections sounded pretty good even on the first attempt. And there was a long duet between our first chair clarinet and an oboe player who just happens to be his 10th grade daughter. They sounded so wonderful, the two of them together, that the rest of us, the entire band, forgot to keep counting and none of us came in after the 14 or so measures of their solo. The director laughed and lowered her baton, voicing what we were all thinking; what a wonderful opportunity for this father/daughter duo to play something so beautiful together. To create something breathlessly beautiful with her Dad…it will be a memory she remembers forever.

That is the beauty of playing in a group like this. There are several parent/teenager duos in the band and I think they all enjoy the experience of doing something like this together. I know we enjoy having them with us. We would not be the group we are without the support of many local musically talented kids. They fill in our gaps, cover our mistakes and generally don’t treat us like the old farts we are. Sometimes they remind us of how old we are just by their intense youthfulness. But generally it’s just fun to have them around.

So, time to get back to the daily practicing. Don’t want those young whippersnappers to outshine us more experienced players. They get to play in their high school bands every day. We have two hours a week. But then we have less homework to do at night so it all balances out.

I hope.