BQ's raspberry/honey scones

BQ's raspberry honey scones

2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup butter
1 cup frozen rasberries
1 cup milk
1/4 cup honey
extra flour

Stir together dry ingredients, cut in butter, throw in rasberries and cut up with a pastry cutter (or chop before you throw them in). Stir together milk and honey, then add to dry ingredients, stir until blended, and add enough flour so it is not real sticky. Roll into a 7 inch circle, place on greased baking pan, and cut into 6 or 8 slices. Pull the slices away from each other a little, and bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. Check, you may need to bake another 5 or 10 minutes, depending on how thick you rolled the dough.

Eat them hot, with honey poured over the tops, although they do taste good later too. I have a lot of honey right now.

I have been painting my dining room. I hung the color up for a month, decided it was time, and started ripping wallpaper(well, I started a month ago, but time gets away.) Now I have half of it done. It is ORANGE! Well, actually a harvest russet, more brown than reddish tones, but it is bright. Dave likes it, and it makes me happy looking at it. I really like bright colors. The only problem is that our kitchen is painted a dark green, so if you stand looking through to the kitchen it is pretty hidious! Darn, I guess that means i am painting the kitchen next! I have a great yellow already picked out, and it looks really good with the orange.

My dad is coming tomorrow to watch the kids for the week while I am at camp. I am so not ready! Well, I am ready for camp, I am not ready for my dad to visit! I know what I am doing tomorrow, uber clean/finish painting.

I had intents of posting some thoughts, but I think i am heading to bed. I will try again tomorrow night.

A cold can of beer

Take one can Milwalkees Best out of fridge.

Open can.

Sit down and put your feet up.

Drink.

Repeat until unable to get to the fridge.

It has been a very long three days. Monday Uncle Bill and his friend Art came over to get the bees out of the wall. For those who don't know, we had an active hive living in the wall of our house. We chose to let them winter over, and get them out in the spring. So anyways. Uncle Bill and Art get the frames ready, set up the scaffolding over the staircase where they are, we suit up, and start taking down wall.

It is smoky, due to smoking the bees to keep them calm. They take out about a three foot long and one stud width wide section of wall, and find bees and comb. So we take out all the comb, set it into frames, and place the frames in the hive body. There was tons of honey, no brood at all (babies), which meant no queen. So we take the hive body outside, place a queen cell (a piece of comb containing a new queen, which looks like a peanut) into the hive and close it up. There are some bees upstairs, but they tell me to get a paper bag after dark and sweep them all into it, then pour them in the hive body.

Mind you it is about 90 degrees and they drank probably a twelve pack while doing the job.

So off they go.

Forward to 10 o'clock that night. I get the paper bag, I suit up, and head up to the hole in the wall. The bees are clumped together, about a softball sized clump, I think Oh good, this should be fine. I get the bag up there, put the brush above the clump and sweep down. OH MY GOD! They start just this high pitched humming and start flying out at me. They DO NOT just fall in the bag. They ARE NOT happy at all. Then I get stung on the leg. The guy at the store says I would be safe in jeans. My heart is in my throat, my adrenaline is pumping, and I just want to run. I carefully close the bag, step off the scaffolding, and walk down the stairs, bees screaming in my ears(luckily the jacket/veil worked!) I dump the bees into the hive, and walk away. I just want to run shrieking but I know I cant. I wait until all the bees leave me and go in the house.

I couldn't go back for 3 hours. I was so scared! Finally at 1 am, after watching a movie with my brother in law, I thought I have to go back. If I don't I will never do it. So I made a batch of sugar water, which I saw in a video is supposed to calm the bees, suit up with snow pants and the jacket/veil, and go back. I took an old window screen, covered up the opening and sprayed them through the screen. Then I took the bag and tried again. they fell right in, no problems. A few were flying around, but they were much better. So I went outside, emptied the bees into the hive, and went to bed, feeling very proud of myself.

The next morning they are all back! I got out my vacuum and sucked up enough so I could see what was happening. There were half inch grooves along the back to the wall, and they were waking into the next stud section. I pounded on the wall and put my ear up, and sure enough I could hear them. Over the next two days i tore out 3 more sections, two with full comb and one with just bees. I finally today got all the comb cleared out, and there was a huge wad of bees up in the joist. Since today we borrowed a veil for Steve, we went up with a paper back and a scraper. We soaked the daylights out of the bees, put the paper bag up, and Steve scraped while I held the bag. We got about 2 pounds of bees out. We closed it up, poured it into the hive, and sealed the hive up. We packed it up and took it 5 miles down the road to a bee keeper, who will let them stay for 2 weeks. If they live we will bring them back here.

I had to kill the rest of the bees tonight ;-( They would have died anyways, and I can't find and plug up the hole until I cleared them out. I really hated doing that. If I ever need to do this again I am buying a bee vacuum so I can get them all alive.


I have strained 3 pints of honey from the first day, and there is about 30 more pounds to process.

I only got stung 3 times, once a day. One in the leg, through the jeans, one crawled up my pantleg, and one got me on the finger through the glove.

I am not afraid of bees anymore.

I also went to the local bee keeping association meeting monday night. What a riot they all are. All have at leat 20 years on me, and they were picking on each other the whole time. The President says "Any old bills?" And they all point to a guy named Bill. Every time they would have a vote they would say "All in favor -aye" then one guy would point to me and say "Jen says no." I really liked everyone, and they had lots of advice for me. They seem like a very knowledgeable but accessable bunch.

Next week is a dog camp, I teach flyball for 4 days. My dad is coming to watch the kids. Dave is coming home Friday. My house is torn apart, the hallway is a wreck, the dining room is still in the process of getting the wallpaper out and painted. The whole house really needs a cleaning since I have been a little preoccupied.

AHHH!

So of course I start cleaning the garage tonight (?) Yeah, I know, Makes no sense. But that is me.


So, deep thoughts. A well? The Grand Canyon? The ocean?

That's about as deep as I am getting tonight.

Gazpacho

In a big jug throw in

4 cups tomato juice or V8
1 diced onion
1 diced green pepper
1 diced cucumber
3 diced tomatoes
5 or more cloves crushed garlic
a tablespoon terragon
a tablespoon basil
1/4 -1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
3 tablespoons lime juice
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon honey
salt and pepper

Stir and chill a few hours.

We had it tonight with BLTs, very good. If the avocados hadn't gone bad we would have had chips and guac too.


My garden is so much work! Wow. I was out there half the day. I rototilled a section which had tried to go back to grass, and started double digging it, and sifting the top layer. The soil is just marvelous afterwards, but it is slow, back breaking work. I also hilled the blue potatoes with sifted compost from the old manure pile from the former owner's horses. The grass to the pile was waist high, so i had to try and carve a path for the wheel barrow. Of course when I started digging up the compost I disturbed not one but two ant nests, so I had to keep brushing off ants from my hands as i was pushing the dirt through the screen. My legs are all scratched now from the bedstraw and saw grass, in fact there is actually the imprint of a leaf on one leg in red dots! Took tow full loads for the potatoes, but I am hoping it is worth it. The soil is rich and loose, so the spuds should be big and easy to harvest.

We had fresh spinach last night! Yum.

My chickens are getting huge. They should start laying any time now. The banty rooster is the tamest, the three large hens are just pissers, they were going after Jack, my dal mix today. He just ran away and tried to circle back behind me! Poor guy.

I got my bee keeping equiptment. I wimped out, and decided instead of the chinzy little veil that came with the kit to buy a good study jacket with zippered hood. I do not want to get stung! I got gloves, a smoker, a hive tool and a hive body with frames and plasticell. I have to build the hive body, as it comes unassembled, then we will be ready to pull the bees out of the wall. I am very excited and a little afraid.

Last Friday I went to an elemetary school and made four 'speeches' about being a dog trainer. I brought Jack and Llyan, and they were great. I told the kids what I did for a job, then showed them with Llyan what I teach the dogs. Then I got Jack and talked about sports, and we did a little frisbee, in a 3X 6 foot space! Then we spoke about how to approach a dog, using Tom as my assistant. He decided to rebel, so when I asked him if his dogs were nice, he said "No, their viscious." in a dead pan voice. I said "may I pet your dogs?" He said, "No, their viscious." Well. So I tried again. "What are their names?" " Rip and Fang" he says! Oh the little bugger! Well, he finally gave up being the smart alek, and decided to cooperate. The kid laughed about it, as did I. Other than that little bump it went awesome. Tom was a big help, the dogs were very well behaved, and the kids were great, which means I hit the right combination of info and fun. We had exactly the right amount of time for each speech. I love it when things go that good!

I am hoping I can get more gigs doing this. The SPCA has been putting it out there as an outreach program. I really enjoy it, and I think it does good. It is much better than going to the spca, where I am always wanting to take home another dog (NOT something I need!)

Saturday Jack and I and Tom went to a frisbee tourney about an hour away. My throws sucked, so we only came in third, but we had a god time. Poor Tom was bored, so we spent the rest of the day doing fun stuff.

I wrote about Greg, Andrew and Steve coming over. Steve stayed another day, we went to the lake with the kids. I took Tallulah the Bull Terrier, and she tried on her new life vest (she cannot swim). She wouldn't go in at first past her armpits. She did, however, love chasing the waves from the boats., I finally let her off leash and she ripped up and down the shore, trying to bit the white waves. After an hour, with a 20 minute break in her crate, she actually started to swim on her own. She would take a big lunge, and squit up her face and start swimming! I was very proud, as she has sunk to the bottom before and it must have been very scary.

When Lou was in her crate I hung out with the boys and skipped rocks and swam. Tom got cut on the zebra mussels but was pretty calm about it. I had stuff in the car, so we band-aided it. Nick found lots of snail eggs and mussels to bring home and add to his 2 gallon lake tank. Last year when he started it he ended up with fish eggs and now has two fish in there. We stopped for ice cream-aww man did that hit the spot, the first cone of the season!

Sunday night Tom had absolute meltdown, missing dad, bawling his eyes out. I called Dave and told him, figuring I would find out the day he was coming back and it would make Tom feel better. Well, sure enough the next morning in pulls Dave, who got up early and drove 5 hours back for Tom! Tom was so excited he didn't know what to do. I had to tell him to go hug his dad, because he just stood there and stared at him, not believing he came home early. Dave actually played Clue with us tonight, (he hates board games with a passion) - Tom has been milking this for all it is worth.

Well, there is nothing deep tonight. I am sore and exhausted and am going to bed. G-night!

Breakfast Burritos

Either buy or make flour tortillas, and warm them if you like-I make mine because I like thick flour wraps. There are flavored tortillas which work really well for this, especially the spicy ones. Figure two for each person if they are really hungry.
The most basic form is scrambled eggs, cheddar cheese, and salsa. Wrap in tortilla.

To wrap a tortilla, place enough filling that it take up the space of a dollar bill on a salad plate, the long side of the filling facing you, the short ends to either side. It won't look like enough filling, but you need the extra tortilla space to wrap it. You are going to make an envelope shape. Fold the short side ends inwards. Holding the short ends down with your index fingers palms down, use your thumbs to fold one long end up over the top of the filling, so it looks like an envelope with filling in it. Holding that down, close down the flap of the envelope.

Serve with good coffee or tea, V8 or OJ.

The possibilities for fillings:
Guacamole (tons of it, mmmm!)
Sour cream
diced red and or green peppers
diced tomatoes
diced avocados
lettuce
bacon
sausage
diced black olives
diced green chilis

This makes a great 'day after the big party' breakfast. You can chop all the veggies and grate the cheese the day before, put them out in bowls or a big platter. Figure two eggs and two slices bacon per person, and a two spoonfuls of each topping for two burritos per person. Make each to order, or what we do is use our large japanese grill top and fry up a pound of bacon and a dozen eggs all at once and everyone builds their own. You could also fry up everything in batches and keep in the oven on low to keep it warm until everything is ready.

Last night Dave's cousins Greg and Andrew and his brother Steve came by. It was really cool because Dave is still gone to school, I miss him and we were all bored. We were planning to just have another night with the three of us, but the boys are getting on each others nerves lately. We watched Timeline first, Tom really like that movie, it is a more little violent than I like, but I really like the emphasis on history and archeology, which I think he would do well in.

We then sent poor Tom to be and watch Reign of Fire. What a crappy movie. I want two things from this movie. One, to see more dragons, and two, to see Vin instead of Matt McCaunaghy. Matt just didn't cut it for the bald, wise crackin' kick butt American. He looked ripped, but even with muscles he lacked the breadth of shoulder and natural grace of Vin, and his nasally voice just didn't work. The dragons were so cool, but you hardly saw them. They probably ran out of money, spending it all on propane to get the fire effects. If there had been more Dragons, I would have really liked the movie, even if the premise was lame and the acting mediocre.

Well after Nick went to bed we all started talking about Nick and how he is growing up, and how terrified I am that he will end up getting into trouble. It was interesting, because Andrew is in college, and felt his parents were extremely over protective. But he is a great kid and never got into the kind of trouble I did, and that I fear Nick will face. So which is the way to go-protect your child but have them resent you, or let them go and risk them getting into trouble? Andrew, being the intelligent one, says that there has to be some middle ground. I agreed, and told him so. He thinks that you teach the basics, and trust the kid, but I think that you need to also monitor things.

But what if you don't trust your ability to teach the basics? It isn't that I don't trust Nick, he has been very trustworthy, and certainly is far more self assured than I was. I don't trust my parenting. It took me a lot of years to get to where I feel I am a good parent, but all those mistakes were made on Nick. Is admitting I made the mistakes and trying to be better enough? Is there anything more I could do even if I wanted?

I also really want to screen him from a lot of this stuff for a few more years. I can't help but feel like if I can give him another 2 years to mature before he has to face these choices, that he will be better prepared to make good choices.

The other thing is that I do not trust other kids. Some of the things his friends tell me they have watched just makes me very uncomfortable. The Blade movies, Matrix 2 and 3, Resident Evil, etc. I think if the parents or grandparents don't monitor the things their kids watch, what else are they not monitoring? I just keep telling Nick to come here with his friends, and that way someone is around. I know they will get away with some things, but if I can keep them from having the space or time to have sex or do drugs, hen I am ahead of the game.

We have to have the sex talk with Nick. I gave him a book so he knows the basics, but we need to actually discuss the realities of sex-pregnancy, stds, false allegations, etc, plus reasons to wait. Dave says he will do it, but he is procrastinating as much as I am. We have spoken about drug use a lot, so I think he understands the realities of that whole thing. I will keep talking about it though.

Anyone have any sex talk stories?

My mom gave me a pamphlet on periods and said if I ever wanted to talk....Yeah right. She never explained sex, never talked about waiting, birth control, how to say no, nothing. I don't think she was abnormal for that generation, but it would have been nice to have some extra information to go on.

Curried spinach and tomatoes

Wash and chop a large bag of fresh spinach, or use a normal sized package of frozen spinach. Put a tablespoon of olive oil in a pan, and cook the spinach on meduim with a lid until it is wilted and dark green. Place in a bowl and set aside. Put another 2 tablespoons olive oil in the pan and add 2-6 cloves garlic, 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper and 2 teaspoons curry powder. ***Note, curry powder you buy in stores has no curry leaves in it. This recipe used store bought curry powder which is really cumin, tumeric, cloves, etc. I have yet to find curry leaves in this area****
When garlic starts to brown add the spinach and 2 med/large chopped tomatoes. Add salt and pepper. Cook until heated through and tomatoes soften, serve with Indian Potatoes and pita and hummus.

To add protien you can cook separately 1/2 cup chana dal or yellow split peas according to package directions, (40 minutes closed lid in lots of water), and add in last step. If you like you can add some of the cooking water to the mix and make more of a soup, adding in more salt and pepper and maybe a chicken bullion cube.




I am having a bit of a conundrum. Another board I am on has someone who keeps airing a particular opinion which not only I strongly disagree with but find quite frankly somewhat offensive. The offensive bit is MY problem, not hers. Here is the thing. I have made it clear that I disagree with her, and why. She chooses to continue to keep repeating herself, simply using more words each time but no better arguement and it is clear she is not only not going to change her mind but is not going to drop it.

I chose today to drop it, and she still went on to post a huge page restating what I had just argued. I did not answer.

It seems like no matter what I talk about, she finds a way to manipulate the converstaion into this area, where she again repeats her theories.

Do I simply walk away? Not go to that board anymore?

Do I ignore posts she makes with these theories in it?

Do I start saying Banana after every post she responds to me where this is started again? (It is working with the kids)

I worry because this board is important to me, and the things she is saying do find their way out to cause us all to be judged by her words.

I personally think she has just been trying to annoy me, and it was working. Not any more.


I think NYMOM, that while your reasons are different from mine, you may be right. Maybe it is time for me to leave there.

I also will say that any discussion of that topic itself is banned from here, because it is my blog and I am sick of hearing about it. That is the cool thing about having your own blog!

(I will never ban someone who disagrees with something I post here. Since I will never post that theory here, I will never have to argue it. I choose not to even bother wasting my time arguing it if it is presented by someone else here. No one but this woman would even think of such an out-there theory, so I am pretty safe!)

And no names please for those of you who know who I am talking about.

My husband thinks I should just leave. He is usually right about these things.