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Job 22:21

Get along well with God and be at peace;from this something good will come to you.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=job22:21&version=CEB

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This day in history:

I had a baby girl four years ago.

I am fresh out of babies at my house. All I have left is a big girl.

The cupcake prophesies

I made these yesterday to share with work folks today in honor of the National Championship game. I was planning on making two dozen, but as it turned out, I only had enough better for 15 cupcakes.

Fifteen.

Cupcakes. Championships.

Both are pretty sweet.

If this game keeps going like it has been for the last three quarters, I'm officially declaring the cupcakes as good a predictor of championship titles as that Spanish octopus.

"Ok, Ok - What Had Happened Was..."

My hard drive died.

It died a slow, painful (to me) death.

At first, we thought there was a software glitch, something simple.  Something that the geniuses could quickly bypass with their genius-y ways.

But no.

No genius tricks would work for me.

So I did the best I could to back up what had not yet been backed up (this is your warning, friends, get thee a back-up drive) and then I waited until I could procure a new hard drive.

Much prayer and petition played into this.

Prayers were answered - hard drive came and was installed.

And then it died, too.

No, I'm not kidding.

So I tried again.

So far, so good.

But I write this with my toes crossed, just in case any crazy bad hard drive voodoo is lurking around, waiting to pounce.

In the meantime, we've had some grand adventures.

Like hitting up the homecoming fair at Furman -

...and Miss Betty's Halloween party...

...a book-release party for my friend Katie...

...for which I had the honor of making this cake - chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream...

It was my interpretation of the cover of her book, Keowee Valley.

(The inscription means"Best of All" in Cherokee, which is related to the book.)

And of course trick-or-treating with friends.

And that was just October.

So now that I'm back up and (mostly) running, maybe I'll catch up.

Wish me luck!

Sneak Peek

When I told my friend Christine I needed a good forest path for Lilah's Little Red Riding Hood photo shoot, she said she knew just the place.  So Tuesday morning, she and her little boy Ezra joined us as we attempted to recreate a little bit of Miss Red's harrowing journey through the forest to Grandma's house.

I'll post more of the story arc later, but I really wanted to show just a few of my super favorites, because I'm impatient.  And I love her in this costume. 

I think this one is so fun; she was running from one-year-old Ezra, who as you can tell from the look on her face was a terrible, horrifying threat.

This would be THE quintessential Little Red Riding Hood picture.  She is clearly frightened by something scary in the woods.  What could it be?  She was a good little actress for me, and though I generally hate very posed shots, in this costume, it's just necessary.  I mean, I wouldn't want to REALLY scare her, right? 

 

This picture just cracks me up.  I call it "Little Red in the Hood" because she is clearly throwing signs.  As usual, whether she realizes it or not, she is correct in throwing up her Westside sign for us.

Get Lost!

Lilah and I took advantage of yet another Groupon to check out Stewart Farms' Pumpkin Patch and Corn Maze in Enoree, SC yesterday.

Apple of My Eye

Lilah and I headed the 40 minutes up to our favorite orchard in North Carolina Tuesday morning for our third annual trip to Sky Top.

I can't believe that the first time we went, she looked like this:

This year, I FINALLY saw the "How Tall this Fall" tree.  I really don't know why I never saw it before, but I was VERY sad to not have the three height comparisons to go along with the apple pics.  Oh well.  As you can see, she is about three and a quarter feet tall.



Lilah has always, always, ALWAYS been drawn first and foremost to the play village area.

This year they had really stepped it up a notch, moving some of the little structures around and adding some equipment to make it more amenable to the jeffty billion school kids coming there on field trips.









After I we got tired of that, we got our iconic red and green bucket and headed down to the orchard.



One of the orchard employees said that while most of the apple farms in the area had lost up to 80% of their crops in the hailstorm during the spring, they had retained the bulk of their crops.

And you could tell.


The whole time Lilah was playing in playland, I was listening to the trees on the other side of the fence birth their apples on big plop at a time.  On the ground were piles of dropped - and in many cases, rotting - fruit, now the snack for hundreds of mean old yellow jackets and nasty flies.

I was pleased, though, that the apple trees were manicured in a way that really made Lilah able to reach apples to pick.  Looking up the hill through the rows up trees, they seemed very tall; in reality, some of the trees weren't a whole lot taller than I was.  We did notice that some of the trees were either emptied already of their apples or had apples only at their tip tops; the Golden Delicious trees, however, were brimming, so Lilah helped herself.





She wanted to pull the leaves off each apple before dropping them in the bucket.  I had to explain that while we would do that before we ate the apples, to do it rightthatsecond wasn't critical.





I watched her as she picked; she didn't just walk up and try to yank the apple straight off the tree.  She twisted it around and around until it either popped off its stem or both pulled free.  I asked her, "How did you know to twist the apple to make it come off the tree easier?"

"We read it in a book at school," she answered.




This is one of my favorites.  I mean, Holy Toledo at all the apples!!!





This one would've been awesome if I had gotten all those juicy apples hanging in focus in the front; This shot is actually a total mistake - one I didn't mean to take - so I can't really consider it ruined since I didn't mean to take it in the first place :-)



Our haul.



Gotta make sure we remember what type we have!



Our grand total was somewhere around three pounds and the Golden apples were running $0.90 a pound that day for U-Pick.

After you pick apples, you get to eat apple cider doughnuts and drink a cider slushy.



I'm convinced that somehow, Lewis Carroll knew about these doughnuts when he invented the world "Frabjous."





That folks, is the face of satisfaction.

And thus ended our morning at the orchard.  I am now the proud owner of what remains of Lilah's handpicked 3lbs of apples (which she is eating - to the core - at an alarming rate) and a 1/2 bushel of Styamen Winesaps with which I will make...something.  I usually make apple butter, but I still have apple butter from LAST year, so...

Good thing my Food Network Magazine came with an insert called "50 things to make with apples."

Seriously!

On the way back down the mountain, Lilah and I stopped for a bite at an ancient little diner that I have always, always, always been curious about.





The Little Coffee Pot cafe has never looked particularly busy when I've gone by, but I also don't normally go by when the menfolk are there for breakfast.  On our way up the mountain, it looked positively slammed, so I vowed we'd stop for a late breakfast/early lunch on the way to work.




There's not much about the Little Coffee Pot Cafe to draw you in if you're not naturally curious and willing to place a bet on a scary cinder block building with murals painted on the side.  If I had to conclude a theme from the decor inside, I'd say it was distinctly dressed in mid-20th Century Horse.  There were horses everywhere.  Horses on shelves.  Horses on the bathrooms.  Horses on the walls.  Everywhere a horse-horse!

And though they weren't be-horsed, Lilah enjoyed the free gloves they used to wrap our silverware.



The menu was straight forward, as was the white board on the wall touting the daily specials.  I didn't care for any of them, so I opted for a BLT.  The two ladies working took to Lilah right away - surprise, surprise, I'm sure she bought me a ton of street cred - and when I inquired about possibly still getting Lilah a breakfast item, even though it was 10:59, they were kind enough to oblige her.  In a huge way.

The girl loves pancakes.  A lot.  She wants them all the time.  She associates "High Hop" with Gramma and Papa and happiness and love.

Which is totally accurate, but I digress...

So she asked for a pancake and when it came out...



It was in the shape of a duck!

It was the fanciest thing in the whole place.

All in all, this was a fun morning for us both.  I love going up the mountain and seeing the tippy top leaves just starting to turn amber. The air was crisp, but just right for the activity of walking an orchard and picking apples.  I love the contrast of trying a new-to-us restaurant with eating favorite once-a-year treats from the orchard.

Makes me wish we didn't just do it once a year; but I guess if we did it all the time, it just wouldn't be special anymore.

Konnichiwa!

Forging ahead with my love affair for Groupon/Living Social, I scored a super awesome deal for a sushi rolling class with a local catering company called Chef 360.  My friend Aubrey joined me for what turned out to be a fun night of eating, learning (and just a little bit of drinking!)

Chef Peter walked us through a lot of "Little Known Facts" about sushi.

At least they were little known to me.

Originally, Sushi started in mainland China, where they used rice to preserve meats.  As it moved coastal, and on to Japan, the meats being preserved were fish.

The rice was vinegared in order to stave off a the rank taste and also to aid in preservation. 

And then we learned the proper technique for banging a gong.

VERY important if you want to roll sushi properly.

We started with delicious soups and salads while Chef Peter talked and he and his staff began to make our rice supply.

Aubrey decided to take notes.

To note:  If you cover your rolling mat with cling wrap, you keep it sanitary for multiple uses.  No nasty bits of fish or rice get stuck down in the bamboo slats.

Learning about super sharp knives.

We were not given any of those.

Nori wraps.  And check out my half gallon of wine there.  

:-O

 

We were to make California rolls, which have cream cheese, avocado and crab.

Yum. 

 

 Spread your rice super thin;

 Get some stuck to your finger.

Nobody likes a limp crustacean. 

The biggest surprise in our lesson was finding out that traditional sushi should be no bigger around than the diameter of a quarter.

We've been getting fed American-sized portions of sushi.

Oh, the conspiracy against our waistlines!

 For a first-timer, mine was nice and tight.

This was sometime after we rolled our first roll, and right before we finished that monster glass of wine.  So like 7:30.

Definitely AFTER the monster glass of wine, because Aubrey starting showing off her amazing  chopstick skills.

Yeah, I don't know.  Monster glass of wine.

Anyway, I would so definitely use this company for catering, or a party, or for future classes.  Chef Peter was incredibly knowledgeable and he made the atmosphere super fun.  The sous chefs were also very helpful and fun.  In all, I can't think that a single person in there left out of this class disappointed.

And all for the price of a decent dinner out.

Ok - So who wants to come over for sushi?

I gotta keep practicing my tiny roll techniques!