Spring activities

Spring has come, even if the weather is ambivalent, and with spring has come some springtime activities!  First, L has joined the track team.  She's had two meets so far and lots of practices.  

This is a picture of her getting set up to run the 200 M.  She also ran the 4 x 100 relay at that meet.  B and I froze watching this meet because of howling winds and we learned something.  Track meets involve a LOT of waiting between your child's events.

Here is L on the second day of her first meet.  The weather had greatly improved, thank goodness.

Here is L at her second meet yesterday.  She ran the 100M and the 400M.  She took third in her heat for the 400M.  I know that seeing her in these pictures just standing there between races loses some of the effect but I took videos of her races and they either can't be posted here OR I can't figure it out.  Either one produces the same effect--no videos posted.

Yesterday evening, L was inducted into the Junior Honor Society, along with a small group of others.  In this picture the principal Dr. H is presenting L with her certificate.  My photography needs work!

Seated far left is NB (one of L's BFFs) who is already in the Junior Honor Society, L, a girl I don't know, TB and KH another two of L's BFFs and a young man I don't know.

Here is J at his soccer game yesterday.  It was a lucky shot--I was taking the picture before the ball came into view!  J has been playing soccer this spring but this tri-city's season is only about four weeks long.  I can't talk J into playing club soccer.  He wants to play for fun and play with his local friends.

Here's J "in action" again.  I really enjoy watching the kids doing things they enjoy.

If you know me, you know I can't blog about two kids without writing at least something about all three--one, yes, but not two without the third.  Personality flaw of mine or something.

Anyway, spring finds T doing a lot of the above (electronic gaming) with a series of friends and relatives.  XBOX Live opens up all kinds of social possibilities.  T did a research paper for his English class on the positive effects of electronic gaming and he likes to remind me of the proof that electronic gaming is not isolating but encourages socializing.

Anyway, besides the obvious electronic gaming activities, he is in the Nerds Anonymous Club at school and the club's main pursuit is playing Dungeons and Dragons.  T enjoys learning to play D and D.

Mom's donut recipe

When I was growing up, most of the Halloween treats we got when we were out trick-or-treating were homemade but my favorite treats were those from a store.  I really hope that my disappointment didn't register on my face as those kind adults of my youth put homemade goodies in my trick-or-treat bag. The cookies would always get smashed in the bag, or the candy or popcorn balls would stick to everything or get smashed up before I could get home to eat them.  We didn't receive candy from the store all the time like kids do today.  My brother, sister and I could just make candy disappear! Today, my kids are indifferent to most candy and it is a family joke when they can produce bags of candy from Easter, Halloween and Christmas well into the following year.

So when Mom told me she was going to try making donuts for Halloween treats, I wasn't enthusiastic and, really, for years was always kind of amazed at what a huge positive response the donuts brought. I mean, they were delicious, but they were homemade! 

In retrospect, I think what was happening was that the world as I knew it was moving away from not only homemade trick-or-treats but pretty much homemade anything, so it came to be a very unique thing to get homemade treats at Halloween and maybe even more unique to get homemade donuts.  

Also what is normal and everyday we often take for granted.  Years ago, in Martha Stewart's magazine, she wrote that her father's favorite cookie was some kind of cookie that had to be purchased at the store.  What person in his right mind would prefer something someone other than Martha and her mother would make, one might ask!  We value what is most rare, I suppose, rather than what is common--until that common thing is gone and then we wish we had it and realize we took it for granted.

I think my mother excelled at making breads, not just loaves of bread but rolls, pancakes, cinnamon rolls, and as an extension, donuts.  In fact, I have never tasted homemade bread better than my mother's, ever.  She made many things that were very good but my favorites were her bread items.

Mom started this donut tradition after I had moved from home or as I was nearly out of high school, and kept it up for probably twenty years.  It pained her very greatly when she could no longer produce these treats.  She felt like she was letting her public down.  What we didn't know then was that it wasn't physically too difficult, it was becoming mentally too difficult.  She just could no longer pull it off.  

Because I was not here very often for Halloween, I do not necessarily associate Halloween with donuts, except that now that I'm back home, at Halloween everyone reminds me of the donuts.  I think I will have to at least try out this recipe to "recapture" something my mother used to do.

My sister lived close enough to stop by every Halloween with her oldest two children and they had a tradition of eating Mom's delicious donuts.  My sister always feels that it can't be Halloween without having at least one donut to eat! 

For years, people have asked for Mom's donut recipe and she was always glad to share it.  The recipe comes from the old ward cookbook and it was Amelia Squire's recipe.

Doughnuts or Spudnuts

2 cups scalded milk

2 tsp. salt

1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 yeast cakes

1/4 cup warm water

1/2 cup shortening or salad oil

5 or 6 cups flour

Combine yeast cakes in warm water.  Then combine with shortening or salad oil and flour.  Let milk cool until warm; add ingredients in their order and knead until well mixed.  

Let raise, mix down, then roll and cut with cutter.  

My mother always cut out the donuts without the holes and then just poked her finger through to make a hole before dropping the donut in the grease. 

 Let raise about 1/2 inch and fry in salad oil.  Drop into icing while hot and drain.  

*For spudnuts, add thick potato water.  (I don't recall Mom ever calling them spudnuts but a friend of Mom's said Mom would sometimes add 1/8 to 1/4 cup of potato flakes or 1/2 cup mashed potatoes or the thick potato water to make spudnuts.)

*This makes about 35-40 donuts.

*I don't know Mom's recipe for glaze but I believe it was the following:

Glaze 

(Helen DeMille's recipe in that same cookbook)

1 cup water

1 tsp vanilla

2 packages powdered sugar

pinch of salt 

Guten Appetit!

My first blog book

As you know, a few weeks ago, I'd gone on the blog2print website and uploaded my first four months of blogging (for 2008) to create a blog book.  On Saturday, I received the book in the mail. I'd upload a picture here but I really don't think it would do it justice.  If you're a blogger, click on this link and try it out for yourself--you don't have to download any software and you can get an estimate in minutes of how much it would cost to print your own.  http://blog2print.sharedbook.com/blogworld/printmyblog/index.html

I was really pleased with how it looked--well, the printing of it, the cover and the quality of paper.   I was pleased that the pictures all came through (even if some of them were pretty small) because the other website for printing blog books that I had tried to use initially had flagged about half of them as not being print quality (resolution was too low, I think). (Those were pictures I'd taken from the Internet or that I'd received through email.)  Everything was very readable--no microscopic print.  There was a logical, chronological flow.

As for the general layout (which I knew I was getting from the preview, so no surprise), it was very straight forward--a "no frills" layout.  Of course, I am always the type of person who wants to tweak the layout of things . . . maybe that is a holdover from my years working on the high school newspaper (four years) and the high school and college (one year each ) yearbook. However, earlier when I tried another company for printing the blog, I got so bogged down in "tweaking" that it could have been several years before it met my standards.  So when I tried out the blog2print website, I decided I would just go with the default layout and it is adequate.  I believe you can do some altering--I was just not going to let myself get that sucked in.

After I save up some more money, I am going to print my first full year of blogging (2009) using the same company.  This time for the layout, I plan to select a consolidated layout because I have a lot more blah blah blogging in that year than I had in 2008.  I did a trial run for the new booklet including comments (I didn't include comments in the 2008 booklet) and the estimate said it was going to cost over $75.  I'm going to try to whittle the price down to somewhere under $50 by leaving out the comments, using the consolidated layout, and deleting any entries I can live without.

The first thing I thought, after receiving the 2008 book, after seeing how nice it looked, and after feeling I had received my money's worth, was that I wished my initial foray into blogging had been something that was really worth printing!  :o)

The birthday season

Right after Christmas, we start into what I term "The Birthday Season."  My children have their birthdays within about two months of Christmas.  This always makes it tricky when purchasing for Christmas because you always have to keep one eye on the upcoming birthdays.  Well, we've just had the last birthday of The Birthday Season!

J, HaPpY BiRtHdAy!  We LoVe YoU!

Blog Book

I tried something new yesterday.  I signed up on blog2print.com and created my first blog book.  I decided to try creating the book using just my blog entries from 2008 (September through December).  The book cost about $25.00, but I did not use the "consolidation" function so as to have fewer pages (and therefore lower cost), so we will see what the finished product looks like.  If I like the book, I will try making one for 2009.  Of course, 2009 is my first full year of blogging so the cost will be more because I had more posts during that year, but I will use consolidation of pages and not include comments (SORRY!) which whittles about $10 or $12 dollars off the overall price.  I'll keep you posted!  BTW, there is no shipping cost.