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A2 Milk – A game changer
Today’s public service announcement is also a product review/recommendation. Over the last several years, Ted has started to have issues with dairy. He thought perhaps he had become lactose intolerant, so was using goat milk or almond milk for his tea, and otherwise avoiding all dairy. His sister has similar issues, and told him about this new milk, A2 milk, that doesn’t bother her stomach at all. We gave it a try, and yay! It is gentle on the stomach, and Ted can now have milk in his tea, eat a bowl of cereal if he wants to, and I was able to make the squash soup recipe this week…
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Winter Squash Soup
I have a fondness for cooking shows, especially those where they show you how to cook something interesting. Most of the cooking shows I watch currently are on PBS, but I also enjoy watching Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa. A few weeks ago, she made a delicious looking soup, with butternut squash and canned pumpkin. I thought it looked like a good dinner to have on Halloween, considering it was orange, so I made it. It was delicious, and I will definitely be making it again. I made a couple of changes to Ina’s recipe. First, I cut up the butternut squash, then roasted it in the oven until it was…
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My Le Creuset
Back in early July, my beloved Le Creuset Dutch oven suddenly came down with a horrible chip in the bottom of the enameled coating. Suddenly, you could see the cast iron at the bottom. It looked like this. There isn’t a lot of danger from the cast iron, people cook with cast iron all of the time. But if the enameled coating is chipped, it could continue chipping, and you don’t really want to bite into that. So I did what any 21st Century person would do, and I complained on Facebook. A FB friend (a friend I knew in real life, back in college) mentioned that her Martha Stewert…
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Dia de Difuntos
Dia de Muertos is a time to pray for and remember friends and family who have died. It is traditionally a Mexican holiday, and a Catholic one. I’ve never really paid any attention to it before, but the bright orange flowers reminded me of my Dad, and my Grandma died last year in November, so it made sense to me to buy some flowers and make a small alter with some pictures of Dad, Mom, and Grandma. There are too many others that I could easily include…my Uncle Forrest, my Grandma Wells, my Grandpa Ward, etc. For today, I’m keeping it to these three, the most difficult losses I have…
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Wordless Wednesday, Paris Edition
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Wordless Wednesday – Morning Walk at Heather Farm
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Wordless Wednesday
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Dad’s Memorial
My Dad’s memorial was last weekend. It was difficult. But it was very nice as well. It was a lovely service and very well attended. I think there were maybe 300 people there, which showed how many people’s lives he touched. There were people there from the alternative newspapers that he started way back when, from his time managing (and more recently as a board member) an alternative, non profit radio station, from his many years working in grant writing, from mentoring others to writing books, to teaching classes. People from Meals on Wheels, where he volunteered as a delivery person for over 20 years. People from my step-mom’s life…
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Dad’s Obituary
Michael Wells passed away unexpectedly on Wednesday July 5, 2017 while hiking in the Dolomites in Italy on a long anticipated trip with his wife, Julie Lawrence, who was the love of his life. He lived his life true to his moral compass, leading with compassion and by example. In addition to being a devoted husband, father, and grandfather, he was a grant writer, social activist, consultant, journalist, professor, and business owner. He was a thoughtful, quiet man motivated by his strong beliefs to do the right thing, not seeking public recognition for his actions. Yet, because of his dedication to and deep involvement with many organizations and causes, he…
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Heartbroken
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground. So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind: Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned. Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you. Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust. A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew, A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost. The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,- They are gone. They are gone to feed…
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Cooking for One
Later this month, Ted and Maya will be in the UK, with a brief trip to Paris, visiting Ted’s extended family. His mom and brother are going as well, and aside from the time in Paris, they will be staying with family. I elected to stay home and hold down the fort, take care of the dog, etc. I would like to go to Europe sometime in the not-too-distant future, but I think I’d prefer it to be just the three of us, though I do adore my MIL and BIL. I hope they have a fabulous time. I was thinking about it, and I realized that I don’t think…
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My Stupid Shoulder
Back in early April, I was home alone, and bringing a newly laundered tablecloth downstairs. I was holding it just so, so that it blocked my line of sight in just the right way that I tripped over Mulder’s bed. He has a thick bed, and my foot caught on it in such a way that I could not pull my knees up and catch myself. Instead, I fell flat on my face, while my arm went above my head. I fell hard. I was bruised and sore. After a few days, the bruising and most of the pain went away. But my shoulder continued to hurt, badly enough that…
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Blueberry Pancakes
(Gorgeous photo and recipe found here) It’s ridiculous how long I’ve been gone, I know. When you’re in the blogging rythem, and you blog often, everything seems like good blogging material. When you’re not, nothing seems like it would be interesting to your readers, so you don’t bother. Don’t bother often enough, and the next thing you know, it’s been over 10 weeks since your last post. Ugh. So I decided that I would just find something in my brain, and bring it here. So what you get is yet another recipe. I’ll try to come up with something NOT recipe related soon. Ted’s schedule varies a lot, which means…
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Birthday Cake
Maya requested carrot cake for her birthday party. She loves carrot cake and chocolate cake about equally. Last month was her Uncle Steve’s birthday, and as Steve had chocolate cake, she wanted carrot. I thought about buying one at the bakery, but decided the best way to go was going to be homemade, because there is THE family carrot cake recipe. This is what we call “Mother Thomas’s Carrot Cake”, because it is the carrot cake made by Ted’s Grandmother Thomas. It’s from a cookbook, which I believe was part of a woman’s auxiliary, and that’s all I know. My ‘chili relleno’ recipe is from the same cookbook. I was…
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Birthday Wine
Back in December of 1997, I worked at a company that had our department holiday party on the Napa Valley Wine Train. I was in HR at the time, and there were 4 or 5 of us, I think, not a big crowd. The Napa Valley Wine Train is a passenger train that goes up Napa Valley for maybe an hour, and then comes back. It stops at one winery on the route, and serves pretty nice food and wine along the way. The train cars are decorated in an old fashioned way, like I imagine they might have been in the old west. You depart from a train depot…