I'm Derelict

...in my duty. I know I'm in danger of losing all (3) of my readers...but this is the busy season. Don't bother school people in August or April-May. The week of my birthday I had three concerts to go to. Best song, "This show is over, this show is done!"
Yeah, it's all over in 24 school days. Mike is still uneasy about the whole retirement thing. But I listen to some of the ranting and think, "this show is over".

Happy Birthday, Erin Maureen!

March 28 was the day, but she's celebrating all weekend.
From this...


to this..in 25 years!! Michelle and little sis, Erin.
Here are the bookends--aren't they gorgeous? We are so blessed to have you, Erin. We lost a baby between you and Sean, but decided to try again. Thank God! You have brought such joy and love to your parents and your brothers and sister. And then there's all those neices and your nephew! We are proud of you and wish you the best birthday ever.

Mom and Dad

Easter eggs, a family tradition

I've spent two days creating our family fav, the Easter egg. I started making these in the 70's when I sent for an Eagle Brand recipe booklet. The booklet was lost when we moved and no eggs were to be had for nearly 10 years. :( Then! Along came the internet! I was able to find an updated version on the Eagle Brand website and have been making them again. So here's the recipe. And some tips.

Easter Eggs

1 stick butter, softened

1/2 t. salt

1 can Eagle Brand condensed milk

1 t. vanilla

9-10 C. pwd. sugar (a 2# bag)
almond bark
decorating frosting

With mixer, beat butter and salt together.

Gradually add milk and vanilla.

Beat in 6-8 cups of pwd. sugar, one cup at a time. Stir in by hand as much remaining sugar as you can.
Now this is where it gets fun. You decide what flavors you want. I'm sure you could get lots of inspiration from Truffles recipes. I have always made two kinds: Pecan, and Cherry Coconut. This year I experimented with a Chocolate Fudge.

For Pecan: Divide dough in half. Knead one half on pwd. sugar covered surface. Add 1 C. chopped pecans and knead into candy dough.

For Cherry Coconut: Into other half of dough, add 1 C. coconut and one small jar of marachino cherries which you have drained and chopped and drained again. Knead again. This dough will get sticky, so add more powdered sugar as you knead.

For Chocolate Fudge: Go back to the beginning of recipe. Add 2-3 melted squares of semi-sweet chocolate. I also added 1 C. cocoa to deepen the flavor. It was a drier dough, so more butter might be used. (I'm guessing, can you tell?) There is a chocolate eagle brand condensed milk that could work in this, but I didn't have that.

Divide the dough into equal sized pieces. Roll in your hands to an oval or "egg" shape. Mine are about 2 inches long. The chocolate batch is a whole recipe and yielded 36 eggs. You can see the powered sugar dusting they have.

Place molded eggs on waxed paper, cover and chill for 4 hrs.

Coating: Using Almond Bark, (I don't remember what I used in the 70's) or dipping chocolate, melt the bark. I don't have a great way of doing this, but 2 forks and a spoon worked. Drop one egg in the coating, spoon coating over it, pick up with serving size fork, tap on bowl (this smoothes out the coating, and helps extra coating to drip off), then use other fork to gently move on to waxed paper.

I used both chocolate and white coating. I made two recipes, about 6 dozen eggs. For 18 eggs, I used 2/3 of a pkg. of white coating. In all, I used about 1 1/2 pkg. of chocolate.

The next step is decorating. I made a simple buttercream frosting, dyed it three colors and decorated the eggs. Sometimes I use the color of decoration to keep track of the egg flavor. This time I used two different muffin papers-green for the chocolate eggs, white for the cherry coconut eggs and the pecan eggs are in white coating.

They're rich! Enjoy!

Spring babies

Luci is really happy!! Those eyes are getting darker. She grew 3 inches since the last dr. visit.

Katie--no teeth yet, but she's crawling and walking around the furniture.

I didn't get a picture of Madeline last week. I'll work on that this weekend.

The wee one got away!

Patrick and the kids made a Leprechaun Trap and put it outside to catch the little guy. When they checked this morning, all of Gracie's "gold" was stolen, and a scrap of green cloth was in the trap! I'm hoping there are pictures!

Thanks, Pat! Here is Gracie setting the trap. Note the "gold coins".

Happy St. Paddy's Day!!

It's too cold to parade, so instead I'm cooking. I'll share a couple of recipes.

Irish Soda Bread

4 C. flour

3/4 C. sugar

1 1/4 stick oleo or butter

1 t. salt

2 t. bk. pwd.

1 1/4 t. bk. soda

1 1/2 C. raisins, soaked in warm water to plump (I don't use them)

2 C. buttermilk

1/2 C. ch. walnuts

Cut oleo into dry ingredients until the crumb is fine. Slowly pour in buttermilk. (Drain raisins and add.) Add nuts. The dough will be very sticky and thick. I use a wooden spoon for the nuts.

Divide into two greased pie pans. Bake in preheated oven at 350 for 30 minutes or until top is golden brown and toothpick comes out clean. If serving for breakfast, I glaze with a thin powdered sugar frosting. Most Irish soda breads I see commercially are very dry and dark. This one is quite moist.

For the kiddies, you might make Paddy's Potatoes. This is a candy that looks like a miniature potato.

5T melted butter

1 C peanut butter

1/4 t. salt

1/2 t. vanilla

1 1/2 C. pwd. sugar

Mix butter and peanut butter together. Add salt and vanilla. Slowly add pwd. sugar until dough is stiff enough to mold. Roll small balls (potato shaped) of mixture into 1/2 t. cinnamon and 2 t. cocoa mixture. This gives the dusty potato appearance. Stud small pieces of nuts into ball for "eyes". Chill. Makes 2 dozen.

Since this Recipe Day, maybe you would like one for Unleavened Bread-we use this at our non-orthodox Seder. It's good for Holy Thursday's dinner too. From Rev. Bob:

1 C. flour

1 C. whole wheat flour

1 t. salt

1 t. sugar

3/4 t. bk. soda

Mix all dry ingred. together. Add 2 T. shortening, cut into dry ingred.

Mix 1 T. honey with 3/4 C. hot water. Add to dry mixture. Form a ball. Dough should not be so moist you need to flour the rolling pin and surface. Knead if necessary. Roll out to 1/4 " thick. Cut into saucer sized rounds. Score with knife like you're cutting a pie. Preheat 425. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 8-11 min. Yield 3-4 circles.

And yes, the corned beef is in the pot!

Caroline the Photographer

We stopped to see the girls and Caroline wanted to borrow my camera. Here's a selection of her shots.

Mom

Her pet rat

Sister

The cookies we brought them

An artistic shot from the stairs

Out on the town

Crown Center waterfall

Now that the flu's gone, we can go out and have some fun. This was Christmas weekend! For Christmas, Michelle and Erin gave us tickets to Michael Buble, who was at the Sprint Center Friday, and then we had two nights at Crown Center. Sorry it's a little shaky. Wish you could see how cute he is. Go to his website-you can listen to him there too.
Saturday we went to lunch at the Webster House. This required driving around downtown a lot, since it's a little difficult to get to. Since it's on Wyandotte street, Mike was sure it had to be in Kansas...ha, ha, I love to prove him wrong! The Webster House is a very old school building converted with Helzberg's money into a restaurant and antiques/retail business. Lots of fun. We drove around the Sprint Center in the daylight trying to pinpoint all the new attractions. Then we poked around Architectural Salvage for awhile--they had some items from the Mount building that was torn down.

Here's the hotel pool Saturday morning.

If you get out your magnifying glass, you'll see three crazy women swimming laps--and yes, that is snow on the ground.

Flu Blues

Friday, I came down with a hacking cough and by Saturday I was wiped out. Fevers, shivers, sweats, coughing, coughing, coughing...Sunday night I got up feeling nauseated and headed for the bathroom. About halfway down the hall, I thought, "I need to sit down" and down I went just like there was supposed to be a chair behind me. Luckily, I missed the door jambs etc. I've stayed home the last two days from school. I don't remember the last time I've done that. I'm going back tomorrow--we'll see if I make it all day.

On the radio

Grace called on the way to work today-all excited.
G: Grandma, you're on the radio!!
Me: Really? What did they say?
G: They said, "Terry S." ( my name).

They were doing a little spot with the superintendent on my retirement..

Funeral Part II

Okay, so we get Mom and take her to the funeral home. I made her put on lipstick. The woman does not wear makeup any more. She signed the guest book, "Helen H. sister in law". We walked up to the chapel door where cousin K was standing. I hugged her, gave my condolences, then Mom walks up. The walker is between them, so no hugging. Mom leans in and says, "I'm your Aunt Helen." K says, "I know." Mom: I'm still alive. K: (puzzled). Mom: I've been telling everyone I'm a non-person. K: (getting it now) I'm sorry. It's just been so hard...Mom: I'm just being nasty.
She sat down. Afterwards she went up front and looked at the pictures and spoke to her nephew who didn't know who she was. I don't think she ever talked to the daughter.

And have you heard about the dogs?? There were dozens of perfectly behaved dogs there. We had three golden retrievers in front of us. Some wore hats. One lady led her dog through some kind of ring exercise where they run and heel, and said tearfully that it was for Irene. Another introduced her new dog as Summer Irene. During the last song, one of the dogs in front of us started howling, which made everyone laugh. Susie loved them and introduced herself to all of the dogs, who obliged by licking her. It was a very unusual service!

Feb. 12

We're going to Aunt Irene's funeral today, picking up the "snubbed sister-in-law", (Mom). I told her she had to behave. I'll fill you all in on how it goes. See: kcstar.com, obituaries, click on Feb. 8 on the calendar.

The Big One

Gary Lezak of Channel 41 has been promising that we hadn't seen the "big one" yet. Well last night I think we got it. We have about 10 inches of snow. Got the "no school" call at 4:30 a.m. so I called my people and got back into bed. At 5:00 another call--the supt. wanted me to know I shouldn't try to drive out there. Okay. I won't. It's a snow day.

BTW, an update on my car. Looks like a radiator and some painting will take care of the damage. Oh, and my cute little windshield wiper on my headlight.

Obama Mama

Rain, sleet, snow did not deter us from our first caucus! Held at A-High, about 274 folks showed up. Last time they caucused, about 15 were there. A prof from BC did a good-humored job of leading it. When we went to our respective corners, 70% were for Obama and 30% for Hilary. One guy who was in need of attention, was uncommitted. He was courted by both sides and joined the Barack crowd. The professor told us to figure out a way to count ourselves, and someone yelled, "lines of 10". It was amazing how quickly we did it! We then elected delegates. If you wanted to be a delegate, you got in line, took the mike, stated your name and gave a little speech. Some of them were quite passionate and were definitely better than the speakers who started off the evening. For some reason, Mike was not on the polls. However, Sean and Kevin were! When's the last time they voted in Atchison??

Friends Bob and Connie were among the 3000 who showed up at 75th and Nall in KC for a room that would hold 400. They stood in the freezing drizzle for over an hour before an additional location was found for the overflow crowd. Bob said the line at the church wound around through the building, out into the parking lot and down several blocks. They closed 75th street and the fire marshall closed the building to any more occupants. Trouble was, only one set of voter registration books and about 400 sets of materials were available. Evidently the Secretary of State did not anticipate that the Democrats would come out. Bob says 1500 people total caucused in Kansas four years ago. They had double that at just his location last night.

Is 37 years enough??

Well, I did it. Taking the lead for my boomer brothers and sisters. I handed in my resignation Thursday, effective the end of the school year. RETIREMENT!! ...Or maybe not. I am retiring from the principalship, and then we'll see what happens. I'm 61 this spring so the government won't quite be ready to support me yet. So if any of you have some great job prospects, let me know.

Cccrrraaassshhhh

I've been quite derelict in my blogging duty--I know that's how you lose readers, but oh well. Today's mini-ferocious-blizzard had a casualty--ME! I made three trips from Cummings to Effingham today. The middle trip was the worst (I thought) with terrible visibility. But on the third trip, I rounded a corner at about 20 mph and started sliding. It was a short trip to the ditch. I saw a huge fencepost coming at me. Then----I was pointing up to the sky. My car rode the fence post and ended up with both front tires about four feet off the ground. It looked quite dramatic!! Sorry-no pictures. You can contact the sheriff's dept. --they took some. Mike came to the rescue of course. He and the tow guy propped the car up, sawed the fencepost down, then lowered the car. It's at the body shop. And I'm in the dumps. :(
P.S. No injuries.