Author: Sarah

Sun-Dried Tomato and Spinach Pasta

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This cream-less pasta dish is light and tasty, and the flavor of the sun dried tomatoes is vibrant.

2 cups vegetable broth

1 jar oil packed sun-dried tomatoes

1 (16 ounce) package uncooked penne pasta

2 tablespoons pine nuts

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, plus extra for garnish

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 bunch fresh spinach, rinsed and torn into bite-size pieces

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, plus extra for garnish

Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Place penne pasta in the pot, cook 9 to 12 minutes, until al dente, and drain.

Place the pine nuts in a skillet over medium heat. Cook and stir until lightly toasted.

Heat the olive oil and oil from tomatoes and red pepper flakes in a skillet over medium heat, and saute the garlic 1 minute, until tender. Mix in the spinach, and cook until almost wilted. Pour in the reserved broth, and stir in the chopped sun-dried tomatoes. Continue cooking 2 minutes, or until heated through.

In a large bowl, toss the cooked pasta with the spinach and tomato mixture, parmesan, and pine nuts. Serve with Parmesan cheese.

Homeschooler Dilemmas

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I’m in my fourth semester as a college student. I think it’s reasonably safe to say that by now, I have the hang of it. Yet, even to this day, I am still finding unexpected side effects of being homeschooled.

The first months of freshman year have long since passed, I no longer run into (as many) people worried about my socialization abilities.  Thank goodness that’s over with. But I’m definitely still trying to figure out how to not stick out constantly.

The small things that I’m beginning to remember in order to blend in: for example, putting my name on the top of the paper. Dear professors: that one last nameless paper you waited till last to hand back is mine. Always.

 

Sun ‘n Sand

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Building an enormous sand castle at the beach was Landon’s childhood dream. It was fulfilled in California, where he spent several hours creating one with the two little boys.  They painstakingly carted bucket after bucket of seawater to wet the sand at a safe distance from the ocean, which terrified Dominic. Then, they had to guard the creation in progress from being smashed by the feet of inquisitive siblings coming to look.

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 I love this picture Mom snapped of the boys posing with their masterpiece, complete with a trench for a moat to its shell flags for the turrets. It’s a pleasantly warm memory for this cold February day.

On This First Day of Lent

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Happy Ash Wednesday! I always have a hard time registering every year that it is Lent already, here is something to make it easier to get into a Lenten mood. I sang this piece, Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, last spring when I was a member of the women’s choir at my college (I’m in a mixed choir this year). I love the beautiful melody, and it remains my favorite piece of choral music I have heard to this day. The haunting, mournful music complements the words of the passiontide hymn, and I love the soprano and alto harmony throughout the piece. The words are:

Stabat mater dolorosa, juxta crucem lacrimosa, dum pendebat filius.

At the cross, her station keeping, stood the mournful mother weeping.

I am singing alto in the back row in this video, but I’m so short you can only see the top of my head!

Cherry Coffee Cake

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Quick and tasty! My great grand-mother’s recipe.

Cherry Coffee Cake

1 c sugar

3/4 c vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup buttermilk

4 eggs

2 c flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 cans cherry pie filling.

4 TBS sugar

2 tsp cinnamon

2 c pwd sugar

3 TBS milk

Preheat oven to 325. Mix sugar, oil, vanilla, and buttermilk together. Beat in eggs. Stir flour and baking powder just until smooth.  Pour 1/2 batter into a 9×13 pan and spoon a swiggly design of pie filling over it. Pour the rest of the batter in and top with cinnamon and sugar mixed together.  Bake for 35-45 minutes. Mix powered sugar and milk until a smooth glaze is formed, then pour over the cake when cooled and serve.

Return to Winter

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We were fortunate enough to have a very mild last half of January, so winter has been easier to take this year. I was even starting to worry that the spring bulbs would get a little confused after temperatures in the 40’s and  50’s had melted away almost all the snow. I didn’t need to worry, though, since it is now cold enough, and we have eight new inches of snow. Yesterday as I walked to class in the early morning the wind whipped my cheeks till they were red and numb. It was quite a sudden reminder that there are still at least two months of winter left.

There are a few things that make even the coldest days of winter pleasant. Landon has been working on mastering the preparation of frothed milk cappuccinos. He also likes to make his drinks into works of art which are wonderful to sip on a cold afternoon.

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We also brought a puppy home in October of last year. He’s a cairn terrier, the only breed of dog we’ve found that doesn’t give me allergies.  He’s very friendly with the little kids, and Claire is one of his favorite people, since she loves to give treats to him. We named him Watson, after Sherlock Holme’s faithful companion. The detective themed name suits him, for he always has his nose to the ground.

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Here Mom is holding him on her birthday in November, when he was so little!

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Cuddly is not the first word I would use to describe his bouncing personality, but as he is getting older he is starting to appreciate sitting with us on the couch. If you can catch him around one of his favorite nap times, he will stay on your lap for quite a while. He makes the perfect winter lap warmer.
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Approaching Nursing

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Chemistry, anatomy, and physiology classes are behind me now, and only a few prerequisites to are left for me to take before the nursing program begin full throttle next fall.   When the spring semester begins on Wednesday, my classes are narrowed down into specific topics like pharmacology and microbiology.

I just finished my introductory nursing class that ran for the entire month of January. Many topics we examined were already familiar to me, touching legal issues, ethics, and what it is to be caring. Others sections were more useful, such as safety methods and communication strategies for patients and doctors. A few things were completely new to me, like learning how to navigate academic journals filled with articles on which nursing treatments had the most successful outcomes. But the most interesting moments were when the teacher went off on a tangent and spoke of her personal ICU nursing experiences. The class also included a group project where we role played a scenario of the best way for a nurse to work with an upset, elderly patient at risk for falling.  My group had a lot of fun and even decided to dress up:

Class

 

Daniel

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Daniel, my little sweetheart, no longer calls me Pumpkin. (sniff).  He can throw a tantrum with the best of them, but most of the time he wears a cute smirk.
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He’s growing tall, and learning to read quickly. He likes to find words that rhyme, and if the camera comes out taking a picture of him is mandatory.

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He likes to write out words on paper, and seems to have an artistic bent. He is ever fond of silliness, and has a wide variety of faces up his sleeve.

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If you can get him to stand still for a moment, he is very good at cuddling and giving you a good, long, hug.

 

Christmas Snapshots

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A gate guarded the gifts while they were displayed for a short time before we opened them:

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Claire learned very quickly how to open presents…
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…and was on to the next one.

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The whole family caught the stomach bug right before Christmas. Landon was the last, and he was still recovering until the day after Christmas.
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Note that our family is growing-a little brother coming in May. I cannot wait to hold a little newborn again. Luckily, I’m so busy with school it seems like this pregnancy is passing by more quickly than any of the others. I think it will be spring before I know it.

Gardening Year in Review

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Now that everything in the garden is in hibernation, I’ve started going through the photos of the garden to see what really worked, and what didn’t. I planted quite a few new perennials, and all did very well the first summer. I loved the flowers, so I just hope everything makes it back up in the spring. I’ve lost quite a few plants to Old Man Winter, so I’ll be excited to see what survives this year.  Here are a few things that really performed well this summer:

Mom and I got this unique ‘strawberry and cream’ hydrangea in May, and I was really impressed with it. At first I thought I liked the pink and blue ball shaped hydrangeas better, but now I think these might be my favorite. They began the season a lovely and delicate white:

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Then they blushed to pink over the course of several weeks, making them very long lasting.

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My Grandma sent hollyhock seeds to me a year or so ago, and since they are biannual they waited to their second year to bloom. They were worth the wait, since once they took off they bloomed all summer. I wish I had planted some years ago since they were so pretty.

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and the ruffled hollyhocks were really nice as well, and they came from a seed catalog.IMG_3255

The results of my vegetable garden were a little bit sad this year. The tomato plants were very sickly, and only a few tomatoes were produced. And the chickens ate them. They ate the beets and the eggplants as well. This prompted Landon to build a really nice run for them, but it was too late to save this year’s produce.

One plant that really excelled was a Sungold cherry tomato. It produced so many tomatoes that there was enough for the me and the chickens to share. It had bright yellow orange fruits, and they were the sweetest tomatoes I have ever eaten. Picked and eaten straight off the plant, they were closer to candy than a tomato. I’m definitely planting them again next year.

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The end of the gardening season is probably the hardest thing about winter for me. I wanted to make sure to start spring off nicely next year, so the boys and I planted close to 50 daffodils right before the first snow. I really like tulips, but daffodils have been the best performer in my garden since they last longer and are poisonous so the pesky wild rabbits don’t eat them up. The yellow river should be a good way to begin next year’s growing season.

Thanksgiving Break

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Thanksgiving break is finally here. Despite writing last about how close Thanksgiving seemed, while wading through my schoolwork it seemed that it would never actually come. I had an intensely busy pre-break week, filled with two tests, three papers, two nights of substitute ballet teaching, and two afternoons of babysitting.   After the constant time management and studying, it’s hard for my brain to have it all come to an end and not need to do anything. None of my teachers assigned any homework over the 5-day holiday (I love it when teachers treat a break as an actual break. So many love to give large projects or tests for us to study while we’re away), so  I really have nothing school related to do.

Luckily, there is plenty to do at home, the foremost thing being cooking for our Thanksgiving meal. I used to cook so much before I was a college student, that during the school year I really have the urge to bake and bake and bake as soon as I have a chance. It’s a good thing there’s so many mouths around to help me eat up all the treats!

Moving Along

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Time is surely marching on, and the end of the semester is only about four weeks away. Homework, college activities, and work keep time moving quickly. I don’t think anything makes the days fly past as a test date that seems oh-so-distant, and then is suddenly tomorrow. I’m unable to believe that Thanksgiving break is the week after next. Today the first snowfall fell, (5 inches!) so maybe the world’s new white wardrobe will help convince me that the end of the semester is almost here.

The Mission-California Part 4

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On the last day of our stay in California, we visited one of my favorite places on the trip: the mission San Juan Capistrano.

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The architecture was beautiful, and the history felt so near. It was founded in 1776, the same year the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the thirteen colonies, by Blessed Juniper Serra. From the information at the mission, we learned that Father Serra is considered to be the founding father of California, as he founded nine missions across California.

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There were lots of artifacts from the daily lives of the Indians and priests who lived at the mission. There was a vegetable garden, a furnace for melting metal,  and this millstone for grinding grain.

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I wish they still made buildings with so many arches and bells! I counted at least seven bells around the mission.

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IMG_4103There was a lovely garden inside, featuring a fountain, lots of flowers, and exotic looking cacti. There were also dozens of large butterflies and hummingbirds flying around, mostly species I had never seen before.

IMG_4066I love vine covered buildings:

IMG_4068arches, arches…

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IMG_4078The town around the mission, also named San Juan Capistrano, featured the bells in their streetlights. They were very unique.

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