Showing posts with label daily living. Show all posts
Showing posts with label daily living. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 09, 2013

Another Wednesday but what to show for it...

I have another loaf rising
right now for lunch.
*
I am making a bag for my knitting class
but it is so slow and does not look like anything
but a long pile of stitches, so
I did not yarn along post today.
I can say that I am slowly getting the seed stitch down
but wish I was faster at it.
Pictures from Princeton a week or so back...

A beautiful old church
but one that was made into a new contemporary one.

They kept some of the beauty
but then inside
the praise band and big screen.
When I went to BC I was reminded
of the sincere love of God that the protestants have.
I saw it deeply at the reunion.
But the jettison of all beauty,
what a great and true loss,
not to mention many other things they
do not know that they lost along the way....

Where ever Mr. Husband and I go,
our icons come too
and they make the room alive, comfortable and
well, real and blessed...
 
I just love our Cleo Cat.
She's so funny.
I kinda got out of rhythm
or forgot to be thankful,
you know one of those upside down inside days
but yet, God is so good and
I was reminded again
of how we need to just be with God everyday
and to serve where I am.
*
The chicken broth is still slowly cooking away
and it smells so good;
it's going to add a lot of flavour to the butternut squash soup
I plan on making this weekend.
Question for those who cook soup:
I have two recipes in my new to me thanksgiving cookbooks,
both say you can do this soup up to three days in advance.
One uses half and half and the other cream itself.
For doing it three days in advance,
which would you do?
*
I finished the book the help and
I am still pondering it.
It deserves a post of it's own.
I am reading a book about a midwife called
A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812
and so far it is quite satisfying.
I am finally reading more books, now that I am not glued to FB all the time.
Been meaning to write a post about that too,
why FB was interfering so greatly with things
and the gains and losses in not using it.
Well, I guess I should just do this now.
*
Really it is quite simple.
FB was sucking my life, my time,
my attention away from me.
It became an addiction, and I knew it as such for years,
ever since I was at a family reunion in MI
before I even knew Mr. Husband and
relatives were talking about their addiction to it,
though in a light-handed way,
as if addictions do not matter, so long as they are not
to drugs, or such things.
I could not deny it then and lived with it for years.
When I got mono it was even worse and
I turned to FB because I was so lonely,
not having the strength to leave the couch
and most often with no one but Mr. Husband to visit me
(not that I am discounting Mr. Husband who
is one of the greatest blessings in my life!).
And years before, it was a great help to me also,
when I was in Ottawa in-between jobs.
*
But in the end I realized that when I would be done with scanning
FB, I would feel so inwardly disheveled,
I would feel more lonely, not less
and my sense of isolation instead of being decreased
the minute I left I felt it was worse.
Then Mr. Husband emailed me an article
about how the more one uses FB, the worse one feels
and that depression can often result.
Then came that day right before we went to Ottawa.
I realized I had gotten nothing done that day;
no book read, no knitting, no baking, nothing but one and off the computer.
Not that I am not on it now, writing this.
But that was it.
I knew I had to change.
I told Mr. Husband the computer had to move into the office
and I needed my living and dining room free of it.
*
I needed to live,
I needed to have my time back.
*
Well that was the end of FB for the most part.
I still have it and
I still use it a bit, but no more than 5 minutes a day
and often just to check up on a certain person or people.
The loss of using it is that many of my dear
friend are on it and I don't know how they are doing that day.
That is a real loss.
Something I had to accept;
just because I stopped using FB, it does not mean
that anyone else did and I had to face it.
*
Yet, I had to break free of it.
It was high time I did something about it.
So now I read, bake and look at cookbooks,
call friends, email on real topics,
and continue to blog.
Since I quite FB I've either listened to or read about 5 books,
with another 5 in the works.
*
I've been able to have a better routine to my day.
While I still can feel lonely at times,
it's not as bad.
*
Since then I've talked to people
and found they too have not read books like they used to
because of FB or even that they do not spell well,
of all things.
*
I cut down even on blog reading though I still enjoy many
and comment on them.
*
Well, I am off to bake bread for Mr. Husband and I's lunch
and do other things, like ironing and listening to
an audio book...
*
Life is a process and even on mixed up days,
I am so glad for God's mercy in it all.

Thursday, October 03, 2013

Thursday and it feels like Friday


October already.
I find I am being pulled in many directions at once.
Do I bake, knit or iron?

Took two days and loads of laundry
before I could light my lampadas again;
our 4 day candles burnt out that I was using meanwhile.

Today I was able to light them again.
Always a relief.

Sometimes I light them with
burnt down tall beeswax monastery candles
and then fish the dripped wax out
afterwards.

Martha had asked how I do my lampadas.
One thing is that I stretch out my wicks by halving them;
they only fit in the wick holders I use that way...

Another thing is that I have paper towel to put
the tops of the burnt wicks
on ~ you know, to prepare them to be lit again.
I wrote more on the wicks and I use and how I do it here.

So I bought this bunch of organic lemons.
I am pouring over cookbooks to see what I want to make with them.
 
So far I am finding the most help in my
older joy of cooking and 1945 Boston school cookbook.
Meanwhile I have a few hours before my knitting class.
Somehow this afternoon is going to involve
ironing, baking and listening to my latest audio book,
one that Mr. Husband listened to in the past,
 Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce 
and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery.
I picked up used this past Monday the book
The Help 
and so I am reading...
*
History and how it is played out and portrayed later is
always an interesting and perhaps challenging thing.
When I read the wiki history of the joy of cooking I am
even more glad that I have many editions of it.
*
However,
one of the things about older recipes is not
only not having what they call for but
not even knowing what the thing called for is.
So I have this Question,
 for those experienced in baking:
I was looking at some lemon cream recipes and the one
calls for cooling them in a mold.
Now I don't know of what a mold is or what to use it for or
how to get one or if I would want one.
The only thing I saw when I looked up 'molds' were
actual molds that are for a fancy cake,
like a lamb shaped one for Easter.
But is this can't be what is thought of for
a leamon cream for a jelly cake or other such desserts.
So what does one use when pouring a lemon cream mixture
to cool it?  What is best to pour a hot lemon cream custard
(or the like)? Metal bowl, glass bowl? A mold (which is what?)? 
*
Well,
hope that I will be able to tell you all
about what I make sometime soon! :)
Thanks to anyone who can help me...
:)