1 9″ pie crust
1 whole lemon, quartered and seeded
4 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 stick of butter or margarine (cut into chunks)
pinch of salt
blend all ingredients for a couple of minutes, pour into pie shell and bake 30-40 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
You can pour the filling over granola and bake for lemon bars.
our baby LRRR came to visit for a few days. We are so lucky to still have him in our lives.
LRRR's dad and the whole bunch.
new my story reads more like a fairy tale, here’s the beginning:
Once upon a time Winter lived in an old woman, and her daughter was Fall. They lived near each other and they argued all the time. When Winter was angry, fields froze early and crops were lost, the year’s young in the forest, the mice and bunnies and foxes and such, had a very hard time of it when Winter was angry. When Fall was angry the wind blew all the leaves off the trees and the shingles off the roofs, and rained at harvest time.
Fall had ways to incite Winter, sometimes just by twisting words, or proving yet again that Fall was stronger, more alert, more assertive, smarter, and just better in all ways than Winter. One day Winter came back to her own house and Fall was there waiting. Fall had taken up residence in Winter’s place, and root crop wouldn’t set. Without even a greeting, Fall darted right in with a sharp jab of challenging words. She was very rude indeed to Winter.
Monkey Friday Food
Yum yum, what a great breakfast! I’m eating some of my favorite rice dish, it’s cooked with various grains like barley, wheat, red wheat, wild rice, quinoa, … whatever I can find, and I throw in some french peas or chickpeas, or another kind of legume. This batch had some walnuts and sesame seeds.
I microwaved a little leftover rice with some green beans I cooked last night and added soy suace and D’Amore. I must have been hungry, because that tasted so very good that I think it’s time to make some more rice.
We are packing about a quarter of all our stuff. It all of a sudden feels like a move!
I’ll keep posting whenever I get to a connection, but I think I might get out of the habit if we don’t get signal pretty soon in the Ajo house.
We get to stay until school starts on the 17th. I will want to come home a couple of days early to get ready for school, but that still gives us over two weeks. Our longest stay yet.
The dogs are going to love it.
I slept until almost 9:00 this morning. I just stayed glued to the mattress, I guess. I woke up once at around 6:30 and had an impulse to get up and get something done right then, but apparently, I fell asleep again.
Then we went to IKEA and had lunch there after we shopped a bit. Then we shopped some more and got home in the early afternoon. I beat the rush to the Post Office and only had to wait fifteen minutes, so Aunt Elaine and Billie and Renee have their in the mail. Tomorrow I will send off the rest. We are really making headway on this Christmas thing.
Tomorrow (and maybe tonight) I am going to hit the oven hard! I need baked goodies for Christmas Day. we are inviting the kids and anyone else we can find to come over between noon and four for wine, dessert and fun conversation.
I can hardly wait to see who shows up. I will have to remember to buy some dry wine, I prefer a sweeter wine, but some of my friends actually have sophisticated tastes. Not me, of course, I like stuff like white zinfandel and sangria. (And lots of it.)
We celebrated the week-end before Christmas party last night. My son and daughter-in-law, Sammie and her date, and me and the Mister. I wore big oven gloves, like a material handling industrialist, and pulled goodies out of ovens for two days before the meal. It was over in an hour and a half, and we moved over to the TV and couch for the new Simpsons.
We put the kids to work decorating the Xmas tree and gift-wrapping the coffee table and putting the festive tablecloth on the dinner table.
Not-Christmas Dinner
deco the tree
If we didn’t have so many dogs and houses, we could think of a vacation to the Bahamas, or at least Florida. My neighbor, the one who had the fairy-themed birthday party, is from Florida, and used to hop over to the Bahamas all the time with her dad. They didn’t need an orlando car rental, but they rented one on the other end, in the Bahamas. Thing about that that makes me feel uneasy, they drive on the wrong side of the road over there! Getting used to that would be hard for me.
We got to babysit Boyd-Lur overnight and we had such a good time!
Boyd Lur and Reddy Kilowatt
I am looking for kiln time now that I am not taking ceramics any more. I might consider taking the occasional class as I can afford it, but for now I can’t afford private lessons, being a starving student. The kiln fees in Ajo are okay, a little on the high side, but I am increasingly uncomfortable with my welcome there. I don’t know what happened, but I am getting ‘you’re not wanted here’ signals all over the place and am a little saddened. But I carry on, and have been shopping for kiln space here in town. There is at least one other kiln in Ajo that I might get space in. A kiln costs thousands of dollars and then you have to have it wired in by an electrician and then it cost lots to run, it takes so much juice, so it is too expensive for me right now to own one. It costs about five to ten dollars a bread pan to fire and I need to fire them twice, so it’s not cheap any way you look at it, but since I’m totally hooked on ceramics at this point I need to spend the bucks. I can make little boxes and decorative stuff with only one firing, but food dished take the two firings. Something will work out if I just keep my sunny disposition heading in the right direction.
I’m so ashamed, I got an 80% on the last math test. When I got it back, the first thing my eyes lit on was a problem marked wrong with a stupid, stupid mistake, a simple oversight. That was four points right there. I will sure be more careful on the next test.
My first time in the new studio was a blast! I made four little boxes for Xmas gifts and a bread pan for sale, using a white porcelain mix I had never used before. It was very smooth and creamy. Dover White, I think it’s called.
Here’s my very own shelf.
my shelf
It’s at the fun stage, the layout. Oh heck, every stage is fun, especially this Mario Quilt.
Mario Quilt lay-out
I woke up today thinking I would spend most of it in the ceramics studio since there is no school on Thursday, but when I was changing into grubbies for the studio I remembered that it was Monday after all.
David Bradley, my pottery teacher (professor, actually) went to a sculptural workshop and came back last week with a great slide show. And a beautiful poster, I don’t know the did the poster printing, but it was beautiful and the pieces shown were really inspiring. I loved the human form sculptures, look at the ‘mudfire’ sites for more examples.
Debra Fritts, sculptor
The last day to start anything new in ceramics class is Dec 1st. I gave up on whistles for now, not enough time to futz with it. Right now I am doing a lot of work at home and this particular noisemaker needs beads and a handle.. I’m thinking of these strings of shells attached to the holes so they scratch and clap against the unglazed, rough, round bottom of the noisemaker.
pottery noisemaker
Dang! I forgot to take my camera to class today, so no pics to illustrate my productive day. Also, I learned that a couple of the more annoying (but not really) first-termers are high school students getting a jump-start on their education. They are the type that uses acne medications and are texting all the time. I exaggerate, that’s the old fogey in me, so I tried extra hard and actually enjoyed the kids today. I have had a slow couple of weeks, things have not gone smoothly and I even missed one day, so it was good to catch up. I did manage to finish a few more udu drums. Here’s one that was all lumpy so I made it into a fish. Happy accident.
udu drum
I’m loving this composition class, here’s an excerpt of my rough draft.
What is an Honors Student?
The simple definition of an honors student would be – the person who maintains a certain grade point average. But there is more to it than that. The honors student is going to be a different kind of student in several ways. The honors student is going to have:
more pride in their work
more willingness to go the extra mile
more innate intelligence
The extra pride possessed by the honors student will be exhibited in the presentation of their work, and their willingness to take on more interesting challenges.
The extra mile will be evident in not only the presentation of their work, but in the depth of involvement in the work, and the honors student will find enjoyment in the assignment.
The intelligence will be evident by the student’s grasp of the subject matter and their curiosity about wider subjects.
My sweetie has been researching the WWII Ajo Airbase ever since we have become part of that community. We walk the dogs out there a lot and some of the pics of dogs on this blog are taken right on the site of the former airbase. He recently found the broken bits of glass from the beacon tower and let me tell you, it acted like a herbal male enhancement on his libido. (Too much information?)
He’s put together almost a whole tile, as you can see, the fresnel glass tile is not square, but wider at the top in a curved shape.
Fresnel glass lens
Cleaning Crew
I have an equestrian friend in Ajo, her horse is named Jake. He’s a big white horse and very very wonderful. I take him some carrots when I go visit. I have not ridden him, and really, I don’t want to. That’s kind of funny, since I love riding horses and did a lot of it when I was growing up in central Oregon. We had horses and horse clubs and the whole rig-a-ma-jig. Love those horses.
We went to a Halloween party in Ajo this week-end. The night was starry and beautiful, we forgot our binoculars, which is my favorite method to gaze at the stars. We decided we need another pair just to leave there.
Look at all the goblins at the party.
costumed partyers
