Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Weekend Goodies and Happenings...

My weekend included a wedding, some baking practice, and a missing spider.

We attended a wedding of a young woman who called our home her second one during her teen years. It was a simply beautiful wedding. Burlap and hand-made fabric flower corsages, ball jars filled with lavender sprigs and sunflowers. The bridesmaids' dresses were monochromatic dusty rose, short and floaty, and the groomsmen wore dress pants, white shirts and suspenders. The ceremony was very God focused and encouraging.

I sliced another batch of pears that have ripened since we picked them and dehydrated them. Highly recommended thing to do with pears should you have an abundance.

Since we've got the pear bounty I tried out another recipe for October's MOFO dessert blitz.

Here is a picture, the recipe will debut in October.

Bounty from our garden.

And, my truck-surfing spider buddy has found a new home. Rob parked near the bushes, so I'm hoping the little guy has decided to settle down and make his new home there.

Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Spider Tracks...

I’ve had a tag-along ride to work with me every morning this week. And he returns home with me, too. And I think the seven miles each way clipping along at 30 miles per hour must be pretty taxing for the little fella, but, yet, each morning, he's there, waiting for me to take off.

A spider has claimed the truck’s outside mirror and driver’s door as his domain. He doesn’t bother me, even though he is a spider, because he hunkers down and hides behind the mirror when I open the door.

His web takes a serious beating from the wind. As does he. At 30 MPH that web is jumping and he's hanging on for dear life. Not pretty at all and I kept expecting to see him flung from his super strong web into certain death. But he hangs on, day after day. He’s either an adrenaline junkie, thinks he scores better hot, fast food than the average spider, doesn’t know any better, or refuses to consider that there are safer yet infinitely more satisfying ways to live life. Or maybe it is that insanity thing I already mentioned. The definition of insanity? Doing the same things and expecting different results. (That’s the socially functional insane, the others are varied and nasty and we don’t want to meet them in dark alleys…spider or otherwise…shudder.)

Why would a spider continue rebuilding a web on an object that randomly takes off at high speeds? Any bug that manages to hit the web at 30 MPH is likely going to put a big hole through the web. Maybe the spider wants to work on his catching arm? But even then, there are better, less dangerous ways to do that, too.

I don't know whether to admire him for his perseverance or place him in an inpatient facility.

Oddly, he may remind me of people I know, a category to which I might belong. Sometimes we are stubborn to an insane level, aren't we? Why would I let the crazy windstorms buffet me, wreck my peace and rattle my brain when it might be an issue I could just let go of? How about clinging to insecurity or beliefs about who I am and what I have to offer the world, even when others tell me I'm crazy to hang onto the two or three comments that made me believe I have no worth in an area. Or refusing to forgive someone until they say the right words from the script I've written and keep hidden in my heart. Or bitterness over __________________________________________ (fill in the blank). Or refusing to live this big, amazing life until I complete ___________________________ (fill in the blank).

After I arrived at work yesterday I found out a fatality happened in an area where & and I regularly walk the dogs. A woman went out to take her early morning walk, another was headed somewhere in her car. The sun was rising, bright and blinding, and a fatal connection was made. Two lives changed in a heartbeat, two women who probably didn't wake up and say, "Today, my life will be forever altered." as they crossed the threshold into their futures. They likely just went about their business, not knowing what the next minute might hold.

I want to take lessons from these two very different scenarios. Perseverance is a thing of beauty when you are talking about Olympic athletes, choosing to do the difficult things to make a better life, sticking out a relationship that is a commitment and maybe a little bogged down but not poisonous. But stubbornness might very well be insanity in disguise.

And, I have no promises that tomorrow is mine, that it will be beautiful, that I will be able to see the sun set. If tomorrow was my last day on earth, what would I want it to look like? What would I want to leave behind in the hearts, minds and souls of those who knew me? Do I know what happens to the essence of me after I die?  Do I have an emotional or relational list that I will leave unfinished, incomplete, or torn to shreds? And am I okay with all my answers to those questions? 

I hope your day is altered only by blessings and goodness today.

Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Bunny Update and New Friends.

bunnies love dem carrots.

I am the carrot lady. They love me, too.

a friend who has ridden to work with me every morning and home every evening the past three days.

can you find the pumpkin in the bush? Hint, not on the ground.

coconut whipped cream. Oh so good.

Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Farm Funs

Teeny, tiny, teensy tomatoes...fingernail sized.

Iowa's largest zucchini and tiniest pickling cucumber

Fresh picked, bee-yo-ti-ful pears

Planted by aliens overnight. It's what they do now instead of crop circles.

Scraps and Snippets ~ Vegan Almond Biscotti

Almond Biscotti

Preheat oven 350 makes 16-24 biscotti depending on size etc.

2  Cups flour
1 TBSP baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 Cup sugar
1/2 Cup applesauce
3 TBSP coconut oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 Cup chopped, toasted almonds (chop and then place in 350 oven for approx 10 minutes)

Combine sugar, coconut oil, applesauce, vanilla and almond extract. Add salt, baking powder, mix well. Add flour and incorporate. Add the toasted almonds.

Line cookie sheet with parchment paper. Form two long flatish loaves with the batter (like small bread loaf size) (Clearly, I was not concerned about the uniformity or looks of the biscotti. If I was going to make them for looks as well as function and taste, I'd make the sections uniform.) To make it easier (Oh She Glows, thanks for the tip) to cut your biscotti after baking, score the loaves. Cut through the dough every half inch or so.

Bake at 350 for 25 minutes. Turn oven down to 300 and cool your biscotti dough for 15 minutes. Slice along the hash marks you cut into the dough, separate into long cookies, and lay the biscotti on their sides. Bake at 300 for 12 minutes. Remove and turn the biscotti to the other side. Bake another 12 then shut oven off but leave the cookies in the oven until they cool. The residual heat will continue to dry them out so they will be very crispy/crunchy.

When cooled, drizzle melted Vegan white chocolate chips over the cookies with a ziploc baggie with the tip sliced off, or dip the biscotti into the melted white chocolate chips and sprinkle with finely ground almonds. 

Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Weekend Lessons Learned...

This weekend I learned a few lessons.

Sad, Scalloped Thumb Buddy...

A) When you have one of those really, really sweet mandoline slicers. The ones that have the protective guard to hold your fruits and veggies and come with warnings to use them....yeah. That neat little razor sharp gadget. Even if you need to slice a bunch of potatoes and onions for dinner and have very little time to throw dinner together because you have to go to a jewelry party at which you are the demonstrator...DO NOT slice potatoes and onions or anything else without the guard. Unless, that is, you want to slice an unexpected non-veggie, such as your thumb. 

I've taken on the burden of pain to bring you this Public Service Announcement (PSA) about mandoline safety. Ms. Thumb is indeed sad. She bled on my pink sweater, payback, passive aggressive little twerp. Ms thumb will survive. Next time she might not be so lucky. So let's just say she learned a lesson, and indeed, what doesn't kill you, will make you stronger, proven. We will never, never, never misuse my mandoline again. Repeat after me. What I just said.

Lesson B) Bunnies are tricky and sneaky. Of course we know that based on the sheer number of bunnies who live with us. However, the little surprise bunny, Fanny, is proving to be very advanced in her trickiness, last night, while I was distracted she jumped out of the cage. I grabbed her right away, but it was a surprise. Rotten little thing.  

Lesson C) Recipe creating, tweaking, retweaking and fails are getting fun. I feel like I kind of have a basic understanding, finally, of Vegan cooking and baking. I've found some go-to recipes and am beginning to really enjoy layering, messing with, adding and subtracting to create new. 

almond bisYummy

I've decided to do a project for Vegan Month of Food (Vegan Mofo) for October this year. I'll be sharing a bunch of recipes then. But I'm trying, tweaking and creating them now, so we can test them out. Last weekend I scored two wins. And Friday and Saturday I messed with three more (two need a few tweaks but are nearly there, one, needs some rethinking). Sunday evening was another experiment that included a recipe for almond biscotti that was stellar. Fortunately, I made enough of a batch that it could be sampled instead of all earmarked for the other recipe. This little beauty in the picture was slated for scarfing. And scarfed it was.  And since this is just one component of a dessert that should be off the charts, I think I can go ahead and share the recipe soon. So come back tomorrow for the recipe. Toad-boy, a kind of a biscotti snob, crunched through one and called it the best biscotti he's ever eaten.

Hope you had a good weekend.

Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Day Job Smile...

In my day job I take chest x-rays. And I bill people. So. Let's just say most folks don't really look forward to seeing me. 

However, I do have some great fun on occasion and have managed to entice a few fans. 

One of my favorite patients begins laughing the second she sees me and doesn't stop til she leaves my room. Can you guess why she's one of my favorites? Seriously, I feel like a I should give her an autograph, she thinks I'm THAT funny. She even said as much. Well, paraphrased this is what she said, "My co-worked called me and I told him I was going to the doctor's office. He said, UGH!, but I said, No, it's not that bad, this is the easy day. And the x-ray girl is hilarious."  Then she cracked up. Her x-rays are sometimes challenging, too, since she has to hold her breathe and stay very still for a few seconds during my annual stand-up routine. I have to get all professional and down to business, and yet, she laughs even then. 

Another guy came in a few days later. We chatted. Then he said, "You know, I had that note you wrote me for a really long time." Uhhhh. I wrote him a note??? Odd. And I said as much. He reminded me that a few years ago I commented on how neat and tidy he was because he folded up his shirt when he removed it for his chest x-ray. He then apparently made a comment that his wife would be amused by my observation regarding his tidiness. So I offered to write him a note that said, indeed, that he was witnessed being neat and tidy.  So I did, and he posted it prominently and referred to it for self-esteem or gloating purposes til he lost is or spilled something on it in his normally sloven routine.

The scary thing is this. I just am sometimes crazy and do weird things for my own amusement. And then I forget about them and move on and forget that someone else was there, and maybe took notes (even ones written by me.) If I am hilarious some mornings, I wonder if it's connected to the amount of coffee I've consumed or the lack of sleep I've gotten the night before.

And upon thinking through the implications of this, I'd rather be known as the crazy, curly-haired, x-ray freak than a crabby, no-nonsense health worker who doesn't like her job. 

Yeah. 

I'll take crazy. People laugh with happy crazy people. With or at, it's still laughing.