Category: General News

I love desserts.  If you put butter and sugar and eggs and maybe some flour together, I’ll be happy.  I love baking and nibbling.  In fact, I’ve discovered (after careful research) that I like the batter or dough better than the cooked version of any baked good.  Bread, cookies, pancakes, muffins, cake.  I’m actually salivating thinking about it.

I’ve taken to putting some batter in a little bowl so I can eat it with a spoon while I bake.  Mmmm…waffle batter.

I admit that I’m a little off-normal.

Bryan sometimes worries that I’ll eat so much batter and there won’t be enough of the finished product.  And to my credit, I don’t think that’s ever been the case (partly because when I eat a couple pancakes worth of batter I’m not so hungry for the cooked kind!).

Until yesterday.

Yesterday, I roasted tomatoes with garlic.  The intended use of these roasted tomatoes was a sauce for lasagna.  I had decided to roast some garlic cloves along with the tomatoes because roasted garlic is one of the best things in the world.

After roasting the tomatoes and garlic with olive oil, diced garlic, and oregano, I stood at the stove and used my teeth to squeeze the soft garlic cloves from their papery shell.  Heaven.  Then I plucked the tomatoes one by one from the roasting pan and ate them up.  Before I knew what happened, I’d eaten half the tray of tomatoes.  Then I ate another quarter.  It was lunch.  Oh, so good.

It might have been a little more civilized to have put the tomatoes on a plate and to have eaten them with bread or to have made some noodles and to have eaten them as a sauce over the noodles, but it was so nice to stand against the warm oven and pluck these little red beauties into my mouth.  One by one by one.

Our lasagna had to suffice with a can of crushed tomatoes as its sauce.

Now if you haven’t had roasted garlic, I need to help introduce it into your life.

Whenever you are cooking something in the oven, stick some oiled, unpeeled garlic cloves in there.  You can either serve them with the meal or use the cook’s prerogative to eat them all straight out of the oven.  You should probably share some with your spouse.  They’re too good to keep all to yourself:)

Here’s my recipe for roasted tomatoes and garlic:

Use whatever quantities you’d like – a couple bags of grape tomatoes and a head of garlic worked for me

• Halve grape or cherry tomatoes (so they are bite-sized)
• Dice four cloves of garlic
• Separate the rest of the head of garlic but don’t peel it
• On a rimed baking tray, toss the tomatoes with the diced garlic, a teaspoon of oregano, and a couple tablespoons of olive oil
• Use your oily hands to coat the unpeeled garlic cloves with oil and nestle the garlic in the middle of the tray
• Roast the tomatoes and garlic in the oven for 35 minutes at 400 degrees or a lower temp for longer
• When it has cooled, eat with your fingers while standing at the stove.  soooo decadent and good….

12-14-09 Update:  I made this recipe again with Roma tomatoes, and I wasn’t nearly as impressed. I ended up blending up the roasted tomatoes to make a yummy spaghetti sauce.  I think the sweetness of the grape tomatoes was a critical component for me!

So.  Monday wasn’t a great day.  Sylvia has been sick (runny nose, feeling cruddy) and she was a bit, er, ahhh, owley.

The following interchange from Young Frankenstein (one of my very favorite movies ever) kinda sums it up.  In this scene, Frankenstein is about to go into a room with The Monster, who they have just discovered is violent and unmanageable:

Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Love is the only thing that can save this poor creature, and I am going to convince him that he is loved even at the cost of my own life.
No matter what you hear in there, no matter how cruelly I beg you, no matter how terribly I may scream, do not open this door or you will undo everything I have worked for.
Do you understand? Do not open this door.
Inga: Yes, Doctor.
Igor: Nice working with ya.
[Dr. Frederick Frankenstein goes into the room with The Monster. The Monster wakes up]
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Let me out. Let me out of here. Get me the hell out of here. What’s the matter with you people? I was joking! Don’t you know a joke when you hear one? HA-HA-HA-HA. Jesus Christ, get me out of here! Open this goddamn door or I’ll kick your rotten heads in! Mommy!

Ahhh, just reading that gives me a good chuckle.  I was unable to find a clip of this exchange online, but I did find a good Young Frankenstein in 5 minutes clip that was really marvelous.

In other news, my darling daughter is quite improved today.  Still runny at the nose, but her mood is back in the manageable realm.  Makes for a much nicer day!

Brother Michael, I hope you enjoy this post.  Writing made me think of you:)

Lisa and Michael had their wedding photos taken by Grey Oaks Photography.  After a month of anticipation, they now have their photos available for viewing on an online gallery.

They’re great!!

Here are a few of my favorites…

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for my new sister-in-law!

My sister, Maretta, and her husband, Kyle have had a bit of a housing adventure this past year.

Last summer, they moved into a house with a couple of friends.  They soon started having troubles with their landlord.  He didn’t fix things (oh, like the hole in the living room wall).  Then a couple months ago, they learned that he was getting foreclosed upon, and they would have to move out by March.

So in general, that was pretty not-cool.  Then a couple weeks ago, Maretta called me, sounding upset, because they had just learned from another tenant that their landlord had not kept the building up to fire code, had lost his right to lease, and that the building was essentially being condemned…and they would have to be moved out by December 1.

The real knife-twist on that story was that the landlord knew this information back in October but had not seen fit to inform Maretta, Kyle, or their roommates about the situation.  So they were all, er, pissed.  Maretta made a chocolate chip cheesecake to help work through the stress.

Fortunately, there are apparently quite a few options in St. Paul for four adults and four cats, and last weekend they found a nice house to move into.  Here’s the email Maretta sent me.  It made me smile!

We have a great place to live.  It is in Crocus Hill (gorgeous  part of St. Paul) a block off Grand (other end of grand than we were living before).  It is the second floor of a 4 plex house.  It has beautiful crown moldings though out.  a wood burning fireplace, a three season porch, a two car garage in back for our use, brand new kitchen appliances, and a pantry that is to die for.  I will try to have a virtual tour ready for you guys to check out on Thanksgiving.  I sure will miss seeing everyone.  Michael has agreed to come help move after, so yay!  Anyway, love and miss you.

~Maretta

I received a card in the mail from an organization I support called The Center for Whole Communities.

The card contained some lovely words that I thought I would share with you.

This story is about generosity, and about nourishing one another with what we have.

Honor the strength of relationships above all else
Love your place
Be willing to consider the hard questions
Listen intently
Invite those you don’t know to your table
Take the time to create something, and to appreciate beauty
Do less, with more depth and meaning
Be present with children, without distraction
Be resilient, and offer healing where you can

This story is told in many different voices and languages, and it is already happening

There are some really good reminders in there.  I hope a couple of them touch your heart.

It’s Wednesday…my morning without children!  Andrew is at preschool and Sylvia is at Donna’s house, and I am at the library uploading sweet pictures from a recent photo session.

While I was waiting for my computer to go chug, chug, chugging along (it needs quite a bit of time to process these things…), I wandered over to a display and picked up a book called, When God Is Gone Everything Is Holy by Chet Raymo (2008).  As I flipped through it, I came across a couple passages that really struck me.  I don’t know that they are exactly how I feel, but I have rarely found printed words that capture my sense like these did.

I wanted to write some of these down, and I thought I’d write them down here to share them with you.  My readers come from a wide variety of backgrounds, and I’m curious what you all think of this.

Here’s the first passage I read…page 22. And this is one I really relate to:

I am an atheist, if by God one means a transcendent Person who acts willfully within the creation.  I am an agnostic in that I believe our knowledge of “what is” is partial and tentative – a tiny flickering flame in the overwhelming shadows of our ignorance.

Here again is a passage I thought was interesting on page 19

The religious naturalist forgoes a personal God.  God defined in our own image.  God invested with human qualities: justice, love, will, desire, jealousy, artifice, and so on — in short, the attributes of human personhood.

the author goes on to quote the Greek novelist Nikos Kanzantzakis from his book Spiritual Exercises:

We have seen the highest circle of spiraling powers.  We have named this circle God.  We might have given it any other name we wished: Abyss, Mystery, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light, Matter, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Ultimate Despair, Silence.  But we have named it God only this name, for primordial reasons, can stir the heart profoundly.  And this deeply felt emotion is indispensable if we are to touch, body with body, the dread essence beyond logic.

That was interesting, but this part…page 91…was really cool.  A geneticist, Dean Hammer, wrote a book called The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes. Our author says,

The gist of Hamer’s argument is this: he has identified a gene that correlates with a personality trait called self-transcendence, as measured on a standard test called a “Temperament and Character Inventory.”  Self-transcendence is a term used by psychologists to describe spiritual feelings that are independent of traditional religion.  It is not based on belief in God, frequency of prayer, or any other conventional religious practice.  Self-transcendent people are self-forgetful, and tend to see everything, including themselves, as part of one great totality.  They have a  strong sense of “at-one-ness” with people, places, and things.  They are likely to be environmentalists, or active in the fight against poverty, racism, and war.

wow.  Reading that I was thinking, “My goodness…I’m super self-transcendent!  Cool!  A category!”  But then he goes on…

Self-transcendent individuals are mystical.  They are fascinated with things that cannot be explained by science.  They are creative, but may also be prone to psychosis.  In short, they are spiritual, and inclined to believe in God.

Hmmm.  Well, maybe I’m half self-transcendent.  Can’t say that I identify with anything in that second part.  While I’m not the kind of person who feels like everything must be explained or proven, I am happier when they are.   And I’m really not mystical.

Well, the book goes on, but I need to return to my regularly scheduled work.  Enjoy!

On Children
By Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Our neighborhood park is full of oak trees. And this weekend, we discovered that the oak leaves have been put into one big, huge pile of leaves. Since the pile is 20-30 feet in diameter and 3+ feet deep, it was more like a pool of leaves!

We made several visits to the leaf pool over the weekend. It was so fun to watch Bryan toss the kids a few feet in the air and see them diasappear, “woosh!” in a puff of leaves.

We hunted for each other. Bryan and I dove in and disappeared. The leaves were dry and fluffy. They smelled like oak and autumn and life. Lying burried beneath them, I felt warm and safe and insulated…until Andrew or Sylvia found me!

The kids wanted face paint on Saturday, so the pictures are of two leopards playing in the leaves.

Note: This post was all thumb-typed on my iPhone. Only three more days without Internet!