Funny 'cause it's true. Hope you relate (otherwise we may not be able to be friends. unless you like snacks as much as i do too).




And these are just because I saw them at a conference last Friday and they made me chuckle (very appropriate for working with educators who have an intense fear of technology):

Because I Love You. All of You.

Caucus (not to be confused with couscous): A Little Old Fashion Democracy

Do you ever feel that we are a little too removed from the political process? Ever feel the disconnect between walking into a polling center, pushing a button, and magically that somehow someday translates into the new leader of the free world? Well, friends, come to Colorado where choosing a presidential primary candidate is a little like playing Oregon Trail - Presidential Election Edition.

So unlike other states were a voter shows up to a polling place and casts a ballot then swings by Starbucks on their way back to work, this evening I found myself jammed into an elementary school gymnasium with several hundred other people navigating the confusion of finding our precinct, signing in, remembering our voter id number, and finding a place to sit or stand. We got there 30 minutes early and still had to wait in a long line. After calling the caucus to order, we found our different precincts and huddled together. Then we literally chose a presidential nominee by a show of hands. Our group then chose volunteers to be our delegates for the particular candidates, people who agree to go to the county delegation meeting to vote for that candidate. I sat there thinking about the way that people have gathered together over the last few hundred years to choose a president, not in isolated little voting booths, but crammed into a building with kids playing on the floor while the adults shared their ideas with each other. At the end of the procedure, our group had I think 79 people who voted and ended up sending 7 delegates for Barack Obama and 3 for Hillary Clinton. Obama appeared to be the clear favorite at our polling location and I'm curious to see how he did throughout the rest of the state. We were just one of dozens of polling places in our county alone.

Now here's the point at which I betray the fact that I managed to pass civics, U.S. history, and U.S. government in high school without ever really understanding things like the electoral college or a lot of other things about the presidential nomination and election process. But this whole experience actually felt like democracy. On the basis of sheer efficiency the whole idea of a caucus seems very antiquated when you have a machine that will tell each party how many delegates to send for one candidate or another. But something about looking my neighbors in the eye and raising my hand for a candidate made me feel more engaged in and more responsible for the election of a new leader. There were people of all ages there and no matter who people were voting for, everyone was excited that we filled an entire gymnasium full of people who are aching to see change happen in our country. It was pretty cool to see.

For more on caucus fever in Colorado, my friend Sean has written a few really great blog posts on his perceptions of the presidential caucus (as well as further proof why Barack Obama should be the next president, if you are still unconvinced).

Everything mildly interesting in my life comes from NPR or Neatorama.

That's not entirely true, but the other interesting things that tend to happen to me are all protected under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. So, here are a few of the more interesting things I've seen lately:

10 Awful Words and the People They’re Named For. Ever wonder where the words dunce, boycott, and chauvinism came from? Makes me wonder what the word Hillman could one day be used for. Most likely some sort of intestinal disorder.

Boot camp for teens addicted to the internet. That's right, I'm blogging about it. On the internet.

Anti-advertising advertisements. This is an irony I can get behind.

Geography trivia game. The most fun you can have realizing how geographically illiterate you are.

A study that shows that not making our beds could be keeping us healthy. Score 1 for cluttered people everywhere!

The best Christmas present ever (on etsy.com, which is a super cool website by the way).

Happy Thanksgiving, Ya'll!

It Lives! It Lives!

After a month of mourning over what I thought was the end of my electronic companion, it has seen a resurrection of sorts. My super rad husband, in a stroke of technological brilliance, dissected the computer into a dozen pieces and a million screws, installed a new hard drive, and put it all together again. Well, more or less. There were still 5 or 6 screws left over at the end that are [hopefully] not functionally necessary. Though I wanted to take a picture of the bare bones spread out all over the table, you'll have to settle for the finished product.

This weekend in Fort Collins brought the first warning signs of winter, cold and rainy. We commemorated by taking extra naps. I officially perfected the art of high altitude cookie baking. And I made Doug breakfast in bed this morning purely out of the goodness of my heart (that and because of the Hoosiers' sad defeat by MSU. Sigh).

Oh, NPR, how you inform and enlighten us all!

I got a few chuckles out of this driving home this afternoon. It brings some light heartedness to the ridiculousness of the presidential primary race and its self-imposed urgency.

If you laugh too, then we can be friends.

Masquerading as Suburban Homesteaders

We are now the proud partial owners of a cow so lovingly named #9633, who is somewhere in transit between a Colorado pasture and a beef processing facility. We've been talking for over a year now about buying grass-fed, hormone- & antibiotic-free beef from a happy local farm, and were glad to find some friends who felt the same. The six of us are splitting a half cow, which will be enough beef to feed us all for quite a while. Which means that we are not only the proud owners of 1/6 of a cow, but the proud new owners of the freezer now in our garage.

As we wait for our meat to arrive, we have decided to try some other freezing experiments. So Sunday at the farmers market, we bought 40-some tomatoes and a few pounds of green beens and carrots. After many hours of cutting, blanching, packing, and garbage disposal repairs (still in progress), here's what we came out with (in can equivalents):

11 cans of tomatoes

4 jars of spaghetti sauce

6 cans of green beans

3 cans of carrots

1 qt of tomato juice

It's been exhausting, but very enlightening as well . Wendell Berry would be proud. And so will we once we get to sit down and enjoy the fruits (and vegetables) of our labor:)

"She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain." (Louis May Alcott)

I've been using GoodReads to document my literary adventures and misadventures and it is WAY easier than putting things up on this site. So you should all join (or at least visit and make witty comments here). However, since I won't be putting many desserts or books on this site, my blog is essentially defunct. Therefore, I shall commit to either a) having a more interested blog-worthy life, or b) posting strange pictures of cats to distract you all from the absence of a).

Case in point:

Dessert of the Week (Peach Pie) and the Institution of the 10:00 Bedtime...

The cruel world of gainful employment requires me to seasonally postpone my work as a domestic goddess, hence the lack of posts as of late. So my apologies for no new interesting posts. It has been a strange summer for me, one in which I tried to recapture the art of rest. Some days were great--reflections made, projects completed, books read, relationships strengthened. And some days I descended into a kind of restless slothfulness.

This summer Doug and I got to explore more of this incredible state that we live in. We got to know some new friends. We had the priviledge of filling our guest bed multiple times over the summer, and for that I am grateful that people love us enough to make the trip to visit.

The school year for educators seems to begin the same way every year. While kids are out finalizing their school supply list, teachers are holed up in auditoriums and board rooms psyching themselves up for a new year. This tends to include guest speakers and other events that remind us of the pride we should take in our profession, in the difference we make in the lives of children (presumably to distract us from realizing how little we actually get paid for all this life-changing).

Yet for some reason, this year, I believe it.

Final Harry Potter Book Blasted For Containing Spoilers

NEW YORK—Harry Potter fans throughout the world were shocked, disappointed, and outraged to learn last week that J.K. Rowling's 750-page...

Harry Potter and the Deus Ex Machina

From Wikipedia: The phrase deus ex machina ['de.ʊs eks 'maːkʰi.naː] (literally "god out of a machine") describes an unexpected, artificial, or improbable character, device, or event introduced suddenly in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a situation or untangle a plot.

I just finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows today. It was a very entertaining read--suspenseful, with enough holes leftover for fankids to stay glued to their message boards-- though I will say that I'm glad the series is over. I don't think I could have endured any more books in which Harry and his friends repeatedly find themselves moments from their demise only to be saved by the most ridiculous and improbable thing you could ever imagine. That being said, it was a fun series, the final book no exception, and now of course I'll have to call my sister-in-law later to gab about the story's resolution.

Dessert, Er, Breakfast of the Week: German Pancake

This is an awesome recipe. Rather than standing over a stove for 20 minutes flipping pancakes, you pour this mix into a hot pan, stick it in the oven, and it bakes and contorts itself into a crazy shape while you sip your tea and listen to NPR (at least that's how I do it).


3 large eggs
1/2 c all-purpose flour
1/2 milk (I used a mix of 2% and half and half)
1/4 salt (can omit if using salted butter)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 Tbsp butter
confectioners' sugar and fresh fruit


Set oven to 400. In a large bowl, whisk eggs. Add flour and whisk until smooth. Add milk, salt, and vanilla and mix until incorporated. Once oven is hot, add the butter to a large cast-iron skillet (I don't have one, so I use a 10 in glass pie plate) and transfer to oven until the butter melts. Remove from the oven and quickly pour the batter into the hot pant. Return to oven and bake until the pancake is puffy and golden brown (about 15 min). Top with fruit and sugar.

While in Denver last week, Joanna took her first trip to Jamba Juice, and while only one of the employees was that peppy, she did get a similar dumfounded response when she was asked what kind of boost she wanted and answered, "A what?"

Dessert of the Week: Strawberry Mousse

This was a good choice for this week, as strawberries are Jo's favorite food and it allowed me to make a dessert without turning on the oven.

Perhaps feeling inspired, Joanna created her own dessert of the week and only melted one plastic dish in the process :)

In other news, we did see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix last week and I enjoyed it without debating the various bones of contention as to how closely it parallels the book (for those who enjoy that debate, I did read an interesting interview with the screenwriter who actually made me appreciate the film adaptation a little better). I am not ashamed to say that I enjoy the Harry Potter books and movies, though neither are enough to keep me up until midnight on their release dates (I really enjoy sleep, you see).

Back to the mitten state this weekend for the nuptials of Dad and Pam and a cousin council meeting to be held at a secret location known only as "The Meadow." Cheers!

Well, it seems July is half over and I've been relying on Doug to chronicle our daily misadventures over the last few weeks. I have a few pictures here to post from the last week, as Joanna has been visiting us and serving as resident MarioKart champion, fellow hiker, and chief lemon water drinker.

Here's a few from Jo and my hike to Horsetooth Rock (aptly named, as you can see). It was a little cloudy for good pictures, though it did make for a nice, breezy hike.

And here's a few from our hike up Mt. Bierstadt on Saturday. We couldn't resist offering Jo the opportunity to see the world at 14,060 feet. The first few miles are a beautiful rolling upgrade through willows and wildflowers. Things get a lot steeper the last 1.5 miles as your lungs begin fight the altitude. The last part is a boulder scramble to the summit for a spectacular view. All in all, we hiked a little over 7 miles round trip with an elevation gain of 2,850 feet. My only gripe was the sheer number of people on the trail, which at times made the day feel a little more like an amusement park than a wilderness hike.

Okay, so maybe it's true that all I do is sit around eating desserts and reading books. So be it.


Book: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, by Gregory Maguire
It seems most everyone has heard this story either by reading the book or seeing the musical, but I'm a little slow on the uptake. This was a fast-paced and visually stimulating novel. I started to lose steam near the end when Maguire tries to tie the story into Dorothy's arrival and the witch starts waxing existential. Nevertheless, it was a nice distracting read for my lazy summer afternoons in various coffee shops.


Book: The Polysyllabic Spree, by Nick Hornby
Tagline reads: "A hilarious and true account of one man's struggle with the monthly tide of the books he's bought and the books he's been meaning to read." I love Hornby's books, especially High Fidelity, and found that I enjoy his literary self-disclosures just as well. I mostly appreciate his humor, and the fact that he neurotically plans his next reading based on the feelings exuded by his previous one.




Film and Television: Firefly Series and Serenity
Quite possibly (no, definitely) the first science fiction series I've actually enjoyed. As earth becomes overpopulated, people begin seeking out and inhabiting other planets. So instead of the typical futuristic science fiction with weird looking aliens you find a dozen fledgling planets populated with humans and an amalgamation of diverse cultures. It's an oddly endearing mix of the wild west and outerspace. Watching the Firefly series was what got me hooked. The movie Serenity is just a shorter, darker variation of the story.

The dessert of the week this week was a functional effort to rid our freezer of ice cream before we leave for the mitten state. Thus we enjoyed vanilla bean ice cream with fresh raspberries topped with a shot of Bonny Doon raspberry dessert wine. It disappeared much too quickly to snap a photo.

Lest you people think that all I do is sit around eating delicious desserts and reading new books, I'll post a few pics from our latest weekend adventure. One nice thing about living in Colorado is that when it gets too hot in the foothills you can always move up a few thousand feet in search of cooler air and a breeze. Armed with camping and climbing gear and enough water and food to last us 2 days, Dylan, Doug, and I escaped record setting heat in Fort Collins and head to the Ironclads, a group of rock formations just south of Estes Park. The weather was perfect and our spot was peaceful. My first climb was Gypsies in the Palace (5.8). Feeling a little bold afterwards (possibly by the inspiration of watching Man vs Wild at the Calder's the night before?), I decided to do my first lead climb on the same route. It was a pretty exhilarating climb and one that I won't forget soon. We retired to our peaceful though slightly sloped tent site near the wall, happy to sleep under the stars even if it meant waking every hour to reposition our bodies back to the top of the tent. :) We did a few more routes on Sunday, then took a leisurely drive back to Fort Collins for some choice city deli bbq....mmmmm....

Dessert of the Week: Chocolate Pecan Pie

More commonly known as Derby Pie to Kentuckians and Run for the Roses enthusiasts, my first chocolate pecan pie was a gallopping success (pun shamelessly intended):

1/2 c butter, melted
3/4 c white sugar
1/2 c all purpose flour
2 eggs
1 Tbsp bourbon (which I didn't have and used brandy instead)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 c chocolate chips (I used chunks of leftover Lindt dark and milk chocolate which made it extra rich)
1 c chopped pecans
1 9 in. pie crust

Preheat oven to 350. Spread chocolate chips and nuts in bottom of crust. In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar together. Mix in eggs, then flour. Stir in bourbon and vanilla. Pour filling over chips and nuts in pie shell. Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes.

The butter/sugar/etc mixture looks like cake batter and almost looks like a second crust on top of the pie. For the undercrust I used an all butter pie crust in an effort to find an alternative to shortening based-pies. This one worked fine though not quite as flaky as shortening. Maybe a half and half approach would be a good compromise.

Serve warm with a scoop of whipped cream or vanilla bean ice cream and share with good friends.

Mom B Conquers Gem Lake!

A few pics from our hike in Estes Park on Tuesday. The trail is a short and steep 1.8 mile trek to Gem Lake. The entire hike offers beautiful views around every bend, especially when the wildflowers are in full bloom.

Long post--feel free to read in installments if you wish...


Film: Waitress
This movie was a good way to cool off on a Monday afternoon. As someone whose thoughts and emotions are usually tied up (either allegorically or practically) with food, I, of course, liked the way that the trials and joys of the main characters are inseparable from pies. The middle of the film seems to glorify extramarital affairs, but the story's resolution rose above my initial impressions. Witty and quirky at times, painful and depressing at times, it was much more than a romantic comedy.



Book: Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

I got on a kick a while ago to reread some of the books that were assigned in high school but didn't make much sense to my seventeen year old mind at the time. This is a book that somehow escaped me in my high school assignments, so I got to read it for the first time.. As I perused it in the library, I figured that if nothing else I will be able to clearly understand all of the cultural references and parodies of the story. After a few days of digesting the story which is, well, just weird as you read it, I've found myself liking it more and more. The story was very visceral to me and I could physically feel the chaos as the island descends into disorder. As a parable and a commentary on human morality in the midst of group governing systems I found it pretty


interesting.Book: The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America's Underground Food Movements, by Sandor Ellix Katz

This was a pretty interesting and well-researched book following grass-roots alternatives to the modern industrial-food complex. Diets consisting of roadside weeds and roadkill; the raw foods diet (including raw meat for some); the lifestyles of "freegans" aka "opportunivores" who subsist entirely on discarded food; oh and an entire chapter on legalizing cannibis. Katz is a self-admitted extremist and activist when it comes to food, and the book is not intended to offer widespread solutions to the current food crisis (clearly several hundred million people cannot subsist on roadkill), but does offer some interesting even if unfeasable options with the basic message that it would do us good to become more connected to our food, whether that means growing our own, visiting local farms, or just reading our ingredient labels more closely. I'll list just a few of the interesting things that Katz mentions (I didn't fact check for accuracy, though Katz lists his sources in the back of the book):

**A very eye-opening illustration of how many organic companies (you know, the products with the cute small family farm on the front label) are now owned by major corporations. Click here for the updated info. Buying organic can be a good option if you are concerned about pesticide residuals, the use of genetically modifed organisms, and the use of growth hormones and antibiotics in animals. But buying organic does not mean supporting small farmers. The USDA estimated in 2001-02 that farmers receive only 19 cents of every dollar spent on food.

**Based on research provided by the Pew Initiative, as of 2004, the United States was one of only 5 nations that have proactively embraced growing genetically modified food. The United States cultivates over half the acreage of geneticallly modified food worldwide, whereas most other nations have either banned them outright or used caution in allowing them in their country. Countries such as Zambia have refused U.S. donations of genetically modified corn.

**Although common wisdom tells us that healthy food leads to good health, there seems to be little connection between the food industry and the health industry. In 1960, the average household spent 17.5% of its income on food and 5% on health care. In 2003, the average household spent less than 10% on food and more than 15% on health care. I recognize that this increase is due to multiple factors, but anyone who has ever eaten hospital food can tell you that the health industry does not always practice what it preaches...

**High fructose corn syrup (you know, the stuff that makes dr. pepper so good) consumption has rose more than 1,000 percent from the 1970s to 2000; today the average consumption of high-fructose corn syrup is more than fifty-five pounds per person per year. Katz quotes a doctor studying rats on a high fructose diets. She reports that whereas every cell in the body can metabolize glucose (ie sugar), all fructose must be metabolized in the liver. The livers of rats on high-fructose diets looked like the livers of alcoholics, plugged with fat and cirrhosis. (yuck).

**While the US government is jumping on the biofuel bandwagon by endorsing the use of corn to make ethanol, a small group of people are recycling used cooking oil into fuel. This is encouraging in that it does not require redirecting edible food or agricultural resources and provides a way to dispose of the over 3 billion gallons of used fry oil used by American restaurants each year. An interesting alternative.
6/21/07 Update: I heard a story on npr last night about a man who was fined over $3,000 for running his diesel engine entirely on soybean oil ($1000 of this was to pay taxes that he would be charged if he were buying gasoline). Kinda makes you wonder how serious our country is about reducing our dependence on oil...

I wish I could say that I had all the answers to how to feed an entire nation with fresh, healthy food from sustainable farms (and this would mean feeding ALL people, not just the ones who can afford to shop at Whole Foods). But I don't. And lest I spout statistics in an effort to make me look like a food and health elitist, let me say that I enjoy eating things like cheetos and ice cream, and drinking coke with my pizza. But I will say that in the past year Doug and I have had lots of conversations and made a more concerted effort to know where our food comes and to be more conscious of where we spend our money. And it has been the beginning of a very good thing.

Dessert of the Week: Chocolate Earl Grey Cake

This was a recipe I pulled from Real Simple magazine a few years back and may have made once. The process of making it is delightful, as it makes this wonderfully fluffy chocolate brown batter that looks good enough to eat by itself. The cake comes out chocolately with a little bergamot spice to it and not as sweet as cakes from a boxed mix. We had it with vanilla ice cream and strawberries and it was quite nice!

I've learned the hard way over the last year that cakes and cookies at high altitudes don't always rise as they should and the recipes require some adjustments (usually in the leavening or shortening). And to complicate matters, there are no hard and fast rules for making adjustments--each recipe requires its own set of additions and reductions. But the beauty of this cake is that even if the middle sinks in (which mine did), it still looks pretty once you turn it over and dust it with confectioner's sugar!

In other news, Mom B arrived yesterday for a much needed vacation, havarti is my new favorite cheese, and I was sadly reminded this morning that my student loan payoff schedule ends in 2027. Sigh.