baseball bobbleheads

Admit it. You're jealous. I got to go to a Pittsburgh Pirates game on Nate McLouth bobblehead night and you didn't. Not only did I get a free bobblehead, but I also got $5 towards concessions. Okay, so that means I only had to pay for ONE overpriced item (my Cracker Jacks) rather than two (I got the super dog for free-- after waiting in the rain for 10 minutes for it to cook). Yep, this little collector's item gets to hang out in my office now (hmm-- will that add to the professional atmosphere?).

Seriously, though, a Saturday night baseball game is fun. This was my first major league baseball game; up until this point I've only attended farm team games for the Giants, and even that was a long time ago. I went with a friend from my ward and three farmers from Uzbekistan. Yup, now you're even more jealous, aren't you? How did I get in on this great opportunity? WVU is doing some kind of agriculture hosting deal where they've brought in farmers from Uzbekistan to learn American farming techniques. Two of those farmers are staying with my friend's family for two weeks. They wanted to see an American sporting event. Pirates tickets aren't exactly pricey since the team isn't exactly very good (although they were winning when we left at the bottom of the 7th inning last night), so baseball it was. The farmers invited one of their friends from another host family, so that made two English speakers, three Russian speakers, and limited communication other than a Russian phrase book, pointing, and smiles. The Uzbeks came home being able to say "baseball" and "pizza."

Back to the game. We had pretty decent seats, although not where we could catch any foul balls (of which there were many). We were a little too high for when the mascot started shooting t-shirts into the crowds, but we could see well and we were close to a covered entrance when the rain started. In one game I experienced a rain delay, a home run by the real-life version of the bobblehead, Pirogue races around the outer edge of the field (not real pirogues; people in pirogue costumes. Um, is this a Pittsburgh thing?), baseball food, and a lot of random games and trivia clips to keep us entertained when innings got slow. Oh yes-- and guess who the visiting team was? The Colorado Rockies. Nice link to my Colorado family and friends, even if they're not Rockies fans. (The Rockies were the better team as far as I could tell, but don't tell anyone I said that.)

And I got a bobblehead souvenir for free. Life is good.

Mama Morels

I had never heard of morels until I moved to Iowa. For those of you who don't know what they are, they're wild mushrooms and they're really, really yummy. I ate them at Casa Gonzales (i.e., the Gonzales' home), breaded and fried. Very, very yummy.

So when a friend here in West Virginia said, "Hey, I have morels growing near my house. Wanna come morel hunting?" I jumped at the chance. I'd eaten morels, but I'd never foraged for my own. We drove to the spot and started looking around for morels. We were under some pine trees, mostly. Remembering the morels I'd eaten in Iowa, which were maybe an inch long at the most and maybe 1/4 inch in diameter, I asked my friend if we needed to move the pine needles to see them. She looked at me a little strangely.

Then I found one-- only it was LOTS bigger than the morels I remember in Iowa. The pictures are an attempt to give a sense of scale. GINORMOUS morels!! I found one all on my own and three more with the help of my friend's husband's eyes.

I'm having fried morels and leeks over spaghetti tomorrow for dinner. Anybody wanna come over?

Zuppa!

In March we had a stake Relief Society enrichment activity, and I was a "soup sous-chef." (Fancy way of saying I made one of the soups that was provided.) Several people who attended REALLY wanted the soup recipes, so I'm posting them here.

All of these soups are designed for Crock Pots-- the biggest size. They all serve 16 people, and you'll end up with more soup than can fit in the Crock Pot. Wait; let me rephrase that. You don't cook them IN the Crock Pot. We just used Crock Pots to keep them warm. Cook these soups in a BIG pot-- really big (I used a stock pot). Thanks to Amber McArthur, since these are all her recipes! If you're having spring rain and coolness like we are here, cook one of these soups and enjoy!

Taco Soup

Saute in vegetable oil over medium heat until tender:
1 c. diced onion
1 c. diced green pepper
Once they are tender, add:
6 pressed garlic cloves
Add salt and pepper.
Cook for maybe 3 minutes, stirring the whole time so the garlic doesn't burn and turn bitter.
Add and bring to a boil for 5 minutes (note: don't drain any cans- throw it all in):
2 cans of pinto beans
2 cans of black beans
2 cans of corn
1 big can of diced tomatoes
2 small cans of green chiles
1 package of taco seasoning
Cover with lid and simmer on low for 10 minutes.

Vegetable soup

Saute on medium heat in olive oil:
1 large onion, diced
Once tender, add:
6 pressed garlic cloves
1 large can of diced tomatoes
Simmer for about 5 minutes, then add:
8 cups beef stock
2 cups diced potatoes
2 cups diced carrots
2 cups diced celery
2 T of each spice: oregano, basil, thyme, celery seed/salt
1/2 T salt and pepper
Boil for 20 minutes on medium heat, then add:
2 cans corn
2 cans peas
2 cans green beans
Cover and simmer for 10 minutes on low

Tomato Basil Ravioli Soup

Saute on meidum heat in olive oil:
1 diced onion
Once tender, add:
8 pressed cloves of garlic
2 large cans of diced tomatoes
Simmer for about 5 minutes, then add:
8 cans Campbell's tomato soup
4 cups water
1/2 c. fresh basil or 1/4 c. dried basil
Season to taste with salt and pepper
Bring to boil
Add 2 packages of frozen 24 oz. raviolis
Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes

Baked Potato Soup

Bring a pot of water 2/3 full to boil
Add 1/2 T salt and 1/2 T garlic powder
Fry some bacon until crisp- you need a cup total, so fry a lot.
Wash and peel 4-5 very large potatoes. Cube them (approximately 1" squares). Add diced potatoes to boiling water. Boil for 20 minutes, then drain water. Remove potatoes.
In same pot, melt 1 stick of butter (1/2 c.) over medium heat and add 1 large diced onion, cooking until it's tender. Stir in 1/3 c. (5-6 T) flour and 1 T salt and 3 T chicken bouillon. While stirring, add 9 c. milk all at once. Cook and stir until thick and bubbly. Cook 1 minute more, keep stirring. Add cooked potatoes and 3 c. shredded cheddar cheese until heated through and cheese melts (keep stirring). Top with 1 c. crumbled bacon and 2-3 T parsley flakes.

Tuscan Vegetable Soup

2 T olive oil
1 large diced onion
4 c. chopped carrots
2 stalks celery, chopped
4 cloves pressed garlic
2 tsp. dried basil
2 pinches crushed red pepper flakes
2 T balsamic or red wine vinegar
2 tsp. brown sugar
2 14-oz. cans Italian style diced tomatoes, undrained, pureed in blender until smooth
2 14-oz. cans kidney beans, undrained
2 28-oz. cans vegetable or chicken broth
1 c. small pasta, uncooked
2 yellow squash, cut into 1-inch dice
2 c. fresh green beans, cut into 1-inch pieces

In a large stockpot, heat olive oil over medium high heat. Add onions, carrots, celery, and garlic. Cook, stirring often, until vegetables are softened, about 5 minutes. Add pasil, pepper flakes, vinegar and brown sugar and cook for 30 seconds. Add pureed tomatoes, beans, and broth, bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and cook for 15 minutes. Add pasta, squash and green beans, bring to a simmer and cook until pasta and green beans are cooked through, about 8-10 minutes. Taste soup and add salt and pepper as needed. Serve with parmesan cheese and fresh basil or parsley, if desired.

Broccoli Cheese Soup (my note: this stuff is AWESOME!)

6 chicken bouillon cubes
3 quarts water
1 16-oz. bag frozen broccoli (or use fresh)
3-4 large carrots, sliced, grated or chopped
1 c. diced potatoes

Boil the water and the bouillon cubes. Add vegetables. Simmer until desired tenderness of vegetables is reached.
Melt:
1 cube butter
1/2 c. flour
Stir into pot with a whisk. After it thickens a bit, add 16 oz. Velveeta (1/2 of a huge block) and allow to melt. If it's still a little too thin for your liking, add a little more butter/flour mixture.

Bon appetit, tout le monde!

Lessons from the CheatFest 5K Race

Okay, so three months or so ago I got a flier in the mail advertising a 5K run at the beginning of CheatFest in early May. (Note for non-West Virginians: this does not mean you make a party out of cheating; it's named for the Cheat River, and the 5K run is a fund-raiser to create some trails near it.) So I thought, "Hey, I haven't run a race in a while. A 5K sounds like fun." Um, where was my brain when I made THAT decision? Here's what I learned, which also gives you a taste of how the race went:

1) When the flier says, "The race will happen whether there's rain or even snow," you should worry.
2) When fellow runners say, "It always rains for CheatFest," you should worry.
3) When the course description includes the words "slight incline," you should worry.
4) Getting food poisoning the night before the race isn't the best idea.
5) Sweats are sometimes a very good idea, even in early May.
6) Cold legs= shivering and goose bumps= muscles that won't cooperate in running up the "slight incline."
7) Never run an "up and back" race if you can help it.
8) Tell the police escort at the tail end of the race to back off.
9) Always bring your own post-race snacks. Not everyone understands the need for bagels after a race. Or, um, water. Yeah. Wonder what my $20 registration fee paid for.
10) Make friends with the parents pushing the baby joggers. At least then when you're stuck at the back of the race you'll be entertained.

Okay, so I hadn't trained as well as I'd hoped to for this race. Still, I shouldn't have had to WALK during the first QUARTER MILE!! Seriously, is there a race around here that doesn't involve climbing hills? What's the point of the rail trails if we're not running on them? They're at least mostly level. Okay, enough griping. It was a pretty (albeit cool) day and at least I finished.

Get thee to a nunnery!

Not just ANY nunnery, though. This one used to be a swanky mansion in Wheeling, West Virginia. It's still swanky (well, in a "we're retreating from the world" kind of way), but now it's the St. Joseph's Retreat Center. Nine other teachers and I drove up here for a writing retreat last weekend. Notice my car in the front drive (the red Bug); does that show how much I belong in a mansion, even one now run by nuns? And when I say we "drove up," we really drove uphill; I ran the hill Saturday morning and was very unhappy with my choice to do so. WAAY too steep for these legs!

Our agenda for the retreat: eat, write, eat some more, write, eat some more, get together to share what you wrote. I wrote FOR FUN-- no article deadlines, no practicality at all-- for the whole day Saturday. The picture above is where I spent the afternoon writing. Not very many people come here, and those who do are really quiet, so the deer-- and there are TONS of deer-- aren't quite sure what people are. All morning while I was writing deer kept creeping up to figure out what I was. One even settled down in the grass to watch me. A woman with a pen and a legal pad, scribbling away; fascinating viewing, I'm sure. So I ended up sunburned and with sap in my hair from sitting under a pine tree all afternoon, but it was worth it!

This was another coveted writing spot. As soon as we arrived we got a tour of the grounds, and you could almost see the wheels turning in people's eyes, scoping out potential writing spots. I actually thought the porch swing was too high off the ground for me to write comfortably, but I swung in it Saturday evening after dinner.

Here was our group gathering spot. The picture's a little dark, but look at the big windows. Each of those windows had a very deep window seat in it with a heater installed underneath the seat. Anyone remember the opening of Jane Eyre where she hides behind the red curtains in the library? You could totally do that with these window seats.

This place had beautiful carved fireplaces and ceilings, lots of comfy furniture to sit on, and it was just plain peaceful. When we gathered together to share our writing, it kind of felt like a cross between a slumber party and one of those soirees Gertrude Stein was known for hosting. Hmm . . . an academic slumber party? What was most interesting to me was that every single one of us almost backed out of coming because we were too busy and then every single one of us talked about how grateful we were we came. I felt like I went back in time and walked into a Jane Austen novel for a couple of days. I gotta do this again sometime. Anyone own a beach house I can invade for a few days?

Attempts at Spring Cleaning

Can someone please explain to me why the one weekend I finally get up the energy to get to Kmart and buy the last few curtain panels I need the store is OUT of them? I have lots of windows in my house, and if I had my druthers, there would be no curtains at all because I like lots of light. Unfortunately, no curtains means no privacy, and it was bad enough when I moved in two years ago and neighbors I've never spoken to talked in their driveway (I could hear their conversation from my living room window) about what color I'd chosen to paint the TV room. So curtains are, alas, a necessity.

I thought I would just do a window at a time, making things manageable. I didn't count on Kmart occasionally running out of whatever type of curtain I most needed. THIS time I figured I was safe. Nope. I came home yesterday four panels short and still needing three curtain rods. Grr!

So instead, I tore down wallpaper in the upstairs bathroom today.

Please grow! Please? Pretty please?

So in between General Conference sessions, I planted climbing roses. This one is "sombreuil," and it's representative of the five others that are also now in my flowerbed. The roses arrived Thursday, it rained all day Friday (making the ground nice and soft for digging), and I planted Saturday. No worries, right?

Wrong. I REALLY want these roses to grow. I've been dreaming about them all winter. I went to Southern States to get rose food, went to Lowe's for trellises, bought extra topsoil because all the soil is clay around here. The problem is that I've only grown roses in California, and pretty much anything you stick in the ground grows in California. I probably could plant the bare root roses upside down in California and they'd grow.

I got my shovel and got ready to plant. "Dig hole that is 12-15 inches wide and 18 inches deep." No problem, I have a shovel. Problem. Tree roots. And rock. About a foot down. Not in all places, so a few of the roses got planted deeply enough. "Mix peat moss with rose food and make a cone of dirt for the roots to grow on in the hole." Whoops-- got topsoil rather than peat moss, but hey, there's peat moss left over in the shipping materials. At least a little. I'll just go extra on the rose food. "Plant deep enough that the graft is below the level of the ground." I tried; see tree root and rock issue above. "Cover canes with an 8 inch mound of dirt until the first green shoots appear." Umm . . . that would require another trip to Southern States, and while I love seeing the baby chicks and ducklings there, I don't have time to go again. What happens if I don't mound dirt around the canes? Check directions . . . they could dry out in the several weeks it takes for the plants to come out of dormancy (why don't they say wake up?). That's if there's a really warm day. Hmm. It's supposed to snow Monday, so I'm more worried about them freezing.

Maybe this is trivial to pray about, but after I got all the roses I planted I actually had a little talk with Heavenly Father, explaining that I'd done everything I could to follow directions and plant these roses so they'd grow, but there were factors that might prevent them from actually thriving. I can water, but that's about it.

So then it occurred to me that these roses can extend Alma's faith analogy in Alma 32 (in The Book of Mormon, for any non-LDS blog readers). Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles gave a leadership talk about a year ago when he talked about the importance of patterns, and that came to mind, too. The pattern for these roses is to plant them 18 inches deep in well-drained soil and keep them protected with dirt until they grow. Actual flowerbed conditions didn't match the pattern, which made me sad. But I planted anyway. I mean, what am I going to do? Send the roses back? They're sitting there, I want them in my yard, and so I had to work with what I had available. The faith part is planting and watering them, following the directions the best I could. But I can't make them start growing. That's God's job.

One more talk connection: another member of the Quorum of the Twelve (either Russell M. Nelson or Richard G. Scott-- I forget) spoke a few years back about families and how there's an ideal pattern for family life. He also said, though, and this is the part that's stayed with me, that we can try as hard as we can to live that ideal pattern, but often for reasons we just can't control we can't live that pattern, even though we want to. So we do the very best we can and trust God to do the rest. Planting these roses is a tangible reminder that I need to do the same with the pattern of my life.

Hopefully the plants will wake up and create roses this summer. I'll keep you posted.