Muffin Monday - Apple Cranberry Muffins

I found this recipe nine years ago on the Prince Edward Island, Canada - Island Christmas site. My notes from then say, "first made 12/21/99 - delicious!" And they are. As you may have noticed on the sidebar recipes, I am very fond of cranberries. I think, in fact, that they are my favorite baking fruit. I love strawberries and blueberries and raspberries for fresh eating or mixing with yogurt, but for baking it is cranberries that are number one in my recipe book.

Apple Cranberry Muffins

1 3/4 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

1 egg
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup applesauce
1/4 cup melted butter

1 cup cranberries (fresh or frozen) mixed with 2 Tablespoons flour (don't need this much flour)
2 Tablespoons sugar (for tops)

Sift together dry ingredients.
Combine egg, milk, applesauce, and melted butter, mix well, and add to dry mixture.
In a small bowl toss 2 Tablespoons flour with a cup of cranberries, and then fold them into the mix.

Spoon batter into greased muffin cups. Sprinkle 2 Tablespoons sugar on the tops.
Bake in preheated 400º F. oven for 20-25 minutes.
Note: the original recipe called for a mix of sugar and cinnamon on top, and I left out the latter.

Chocolate Fudge

I've never mastered (or tried more than twice) to make candy using a thermometer and figuring out about soft-ball and hard-ball stages, so I was thrilled to come upon this recipe when my kids were little and we had a microwave. Now the former have grown up and moved out, and we got rid of the latter, and I make this just as easily and almost as quickly using the electric stove oven. It is out of this world delicious and chocolatey. You may also include a cup of chopped walnuts, which I omitted this time because some of the fudge is going to my daughter and her boyfriend who are, in her words in the cell phone text, "a no nutty couple." :<)

Chocolate Fudge

In a greased baking dish, mix together:

1 pound confectioners sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon vanilla
1/4 cup milk

Put 1/2 cup butter on top, and heat in a medium oven until the butter melts.
Remove from the oven, and beat gently until nice and smooth.
Add nuts, if desired.
Spread into 8x8 or 7x11 pan which is greased with butter.
Put in refrigerator for an hour, or in freezer for 20-30 minutes.
Cut into squares.
Store in refrigerator.

Pizza Crust

One of my favorite books from last year is Saturday Beans & Sunday Suppers by Edie Clark, a wonderful travel through her life via food. Her chapter titles are the decades from The Sixties through The Nineties & Beyond. This is one of those books I'll store with my cookbooks. Some others of the same ilk are two Evelyn Birkby books - Up a Country Lane Cookbook and Neighboring on the Air; and At Grandmother's Table edited by Ellen Perry Berkeley.

The first recipe I tried from Edie Clark's book is pizza crust. I've been making the same crust for many, many years now. It's an adaptation of a friend's recipe, and it has always served me well. Yet when I read about this one, I thought I'd give it a try. The recipe which follows is a little different from hers, but still close enough to call it:

Edie Clark's Pizza Crust

Dissolve 2 1/2 teaspoons baking yeast in a cup of warm water, with a little sugar added (maybe a teaspoon).

In the electric mixer, at low speed, mix together:
1 cup whole wheat flour - Addendum: in 2012 I started using all white. And 2 1/2 cups rather than 2. It is perfect.
1 cup white (unbleached) flour
1/4 cup cornmeal
1 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon olive oil

When the yeast is bubbly, add it to dry mix. Stir well.
Cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place for about an hour.
Spread on greased pizza pan or cookie sheet.
Top with sauce and any veggies and/or cheese that you wish. (Tom sprinkles a little black pepper on his side).
Bake at 375º F. until crust is slightly browned and cheese is done to your satisfaction - maybe 30 minutes.

We both like this thin crust so much that it is the only recipe I use now.

Everyone has their own special way of making tomato sauce. Some like it chunky, some smooth, some with vegetables added. I noted in the other pizza recipe (under main meals on the sidebar) how I make my own sauce. But here it is again. I use either Muir Glen or Bionaturæ canned crushed tomatoes and Bionaturæ tomato paste.

2 28-ounce cans tomatoes put through the food mill
2 7-ounce jars tomato paste
handful or more of basil
about a T. salt
onions and garlic which has been sautéd in 1/4 cup olive oil

For tonight's pizza, I sautéd some shallots and zucchini to put on the top. And, as I may have mentioned (like a hundred times!) I don't like cheese, so we divide ours into his and her halves. :<)

Reporting on the 2008 books - audio version - just the facts

80 listened to

46 by women
35 by men
(1 by both so counted each one)

Publication dates:

31 in 2000s

13 in 1990s

1 in 1980s

7 in 1970s

9 in 1960s

10 in 1950s

2 in 1940s

7 in 1930s

1 in 1906

1 in 1896, 1 in 1865

(1 collection of short stories written earlier but compiled in 2003- so called it in the 2000s)
(another Christmas collection, same thing)
(4 books counted as one - 3 in 1960s, 1 in 1970s)

28 re-reads (includes 4 books counted as 1) - favorite, Dear Mr. Jefferson: Letters from a Nantucket Gardener by Laura Simon

Genres and favorites:

4 (counted as 1) children's picture books - favorite, all (the Frances books)

20 fiction - favorite, The Miracle at Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall Smith

16 juvenile - favorite, Counting on Grace by Elizabeth Winthrop

17 mystery - favorite, In the Shadow of the Glacier by Vicki Delany

22 nonfiction - favorite, The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell

4 young adult - favorite, Lyddie by Katherine Paterson

Reporting on the 2008 books - print version -just the facts

39 print books read

23 by women
18 by men
(two books by each so counted both)

Publication dates:

21 in 2000s

4 in 1990s

7 in 1980s

4 in 1970s

2 in 1940s

1 in 1930s

Genres and favorites:

2 children's picture books - favorite, My Senator and Me by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, illus. by David Small

8 fiction - favorite, The World According to Bertie by Alexander McCall Smith

8 mystery - favorite, Locked Rooms by Laurie R. King

20 nonfiction - favorite, Springtime in Britain by Edwin Way Teale

1 poetry - favorite (since the only), The Unicorn & Other Poems by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Today's poem - Good Hours by Robert Frost

Good Hours
by Robert Frost

I had for my winter evening walk -
No one at all with whom to talk,
But I had the cottages in a row
Up to their shining eyes in snow.

And I thought I had the folk within:
I had the sound of a violin;
I had a glimpse through curtain laces
Of youthful forms and youthful faces.

I had such company outward bound.
I went till there were no cottages found.
I turned and repented, but coming back
I saw no window but that was black.

Over the snow my creaking feet
Disturbed the slumbering village street
Like profanation, by your leave,
At ten o'clock of a winter eve.

Balancing act

I've gone back and forth about posting a new years-y entry about reading in 2008. I began writing yesterday about people dressing up to go out, and we book geeks staying at home all excited about working on our booklists, and then I deleted it. I thought I'd just listen to jazz instead. I think for me it has been a discouraging year in terms of reading books but an encouraging year in terms of reading blogs. So many are like stories, fiction and nonfiction, that I forget I'm at the computer and not in a chair with a book. But as I am now another year older, and have read 38 books in the past year, I feel time at my back. How do I find a balance between these two activities which I love so much? I don't have an answer yet.

One of my favorite things in the Provincial Lady books by E.M. Delafield is when she stops and says: "Query" and then asks a question. That's what I am going to do now.

Query:
How do you find time to:

read books
read blogs
write your own blog
respond to comments on your blog
garden
watch movies
cook

and then there are those who have a job, have children at home, exercise, do volunteer work, raise farm animals, on and on and on.

I'd really like to know. Do you keep track of how long you are on the computer? Do you set limits? How do you visit all the blogs you love - every one every day? Some every day, some once a month?

I'm hoping your answers will offer guidance as I try to figure out how to achieve a better balance.

Today's poem by William Arthur Ward

Another fresh new year is here...
Another year to live!
To banish worry, doubt, and fear,
To love and laugh and give!
This bright new year is given me
To live each day with zest...
To daily grow and try to be
My highest and my best!
I have the opportunity
Once more to right some wrongs,
To pray for peace, to plant a tree,
And sing more joyful songs!

William Arthur Ward (1921-1994)

A Jazzy New Year's Eve

This is how we are spending our New Year's Eve - in the kitchen listening to Vermont Public Radio. George Thomas is on most nights of the week, and his show is a jazz lover's heaven.

(long) Quote du jour/Gladys Taber's New Year's Eve thoughts

From Stillmeadow and Sugarbridge, 1953

As I sweep the snow from the door sill, I think if we could gather up all the happy hours of a year and distill them, we would have Heaven. If we added the dreary and sad times, we would no doubt, have a good foretaste of a lower region.

The bright and the dark are so inseparable.

Every life, I think, has a burden of sorrow, and every life has also the delicate excitement of happiness. Cherishing the golden hours and forgetting the black ones probably make for a happy person, the fulfilled life.

As the old year vanishes into the land that no one can ever visit again, I can see the New Year coming with a pale pure fire into the old darkness of the night sky.

I always hope I can meet the tomorrows with more strength, more courage and more love than I have ever met the past with.

The snow has stopped. The stars are shining.

Book Report/Locked Rooms

Locked Rooms
by Laurie R. King
mystery, 2005
finished, 12/31/08

If you've read Laurie R. King's series about Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, you know that Mary's mother, father, and brother were all killed in a car accident when she was younger and that she blames herself. She has always felt that by arguing with her brother, she distracted her father. The car went over a cliff, while Mary was thrown out and became the sole survivor. What a thing to carry in one's heart. This fact has never been confronted until Locked Rooms. In the seven books before this one, we have seen Russell as capable, intelligent, and gifted in many ways. But there is this pain inside her which rarely surfaces.

In Locked Rooms, she and Holmes are heading back to San Francisco to settle some family affairs. On the ship, Russell begins having nightmares: one about objects flying around, another about a "faceless" man, and a third about some locked rooms. She is so upset by them that she is not herself. When they arrive in San Francisco, Holmes has to deal with problems and situations without the cool, brilliant Russell by his side. He must trust in others to help him help Russell. We have a treat in store when he makes contact with the author Dashiell Hammett. After all the previous escapades, I really enjoyed going back into Mary Russell's childhood. Both the character and the reader see the past in a different way than we have before. We meet long-forgotten people and learn about prior events, such as the earthquake of 1906, and get to know this young woman as a more complete individual. Locked Rooms is a brilliant addition to the series. I almost said it is my favorite, but then I realized I can't name a favorite.

I've loved these books since the very first, The Beekeeper's Apprentice and years ago I used to be on the internet Russ L list, on which we discussed everything Holmes and Russell.

I read somewhere that the whole series may be re-released with new covers. Perhaps this would introduce a new generation to Mary Russell. My daughter was in junior high when she began reading the books, and still loves them today. Her favorite is Justice Hall, and she has just read it again for the third or fourth time.

I love the notion of these books; that Laurie King was sent some manuscripts and is passing the stories along. Great, great writing, plots, characters. These are some of the most satisfying books I've ever read.

Today's Picture/glimpse of an amaryllis

Quote du jour/George Harrison

When I saw the sky this evening, I found myself singing George's, Blow Away:

Wind blew in, cloud was dispersed
Rainbows appearing, the pressures were burst

Book Report/A Bear Called Paddington

A Bear Called Paddington
by Michael Bond
unabridged audio read by Stephen Fry
juvenile fiction, 1958
finished 12/27/08

How have I missed this book my whole life? I was ten when it came out. I did raise two little children. We had the stuffed animal. And I even seem to remember the book in the house, but I never read it. Thank goodness, I came upon this audio version. I loved this book. I believed completely in this little bear found at Paddington Station, London. I believed he could talk and think and act just like a person. And I loved his personality. What a funny, heartwarming story. It's a wonderful book for children because it portrays a loving family life, and a wonderful book for adults because it is just plain fun to read. And if you can get hold of this version read by the always excellent Stephen Fry, you'll be in reader's heaven. Really.

Sunday Stroll/December 28

A misty, foggy day is my very favorite kind of weather at any time of year. Today's temp is in the mid-thirties (fahrenheit), the icicles have all melted, and there is a little grass showing where the snow has been plowed. The first two pictures were taken out the window, looking into the north pasture.

More a run than a stroll!

Tom gave me a zoom lens for Christmas which I just love.

Crabapple

Silver maple and locust

Resolute Reader

As Mr. Monk often says, here's the thing. I am embarking on a year long effort with regard to reading and books. I am not going to buy one single book until next December. I'm not going to borrow one book from the library for a year (other than audiobooks). I am going to read strictly and solely from my own library. When I told Tom of my venture he said, "all I know is that when I want to read a book, I've got plenty to choose from." Exactly.

I've done this before with greater and lesser degrees of success, but this is a commitment. I'll continue to take note of books I want to read, but I will not buy or borrow them until a year has passed. There I've said it. Hold me to it!

Christmas Snapshots

The Christmas morning sky was beautiful,

but we began the day with a power outage! There were high winds, and though this looks threatening,
it wasn't the reason we had no electricity. After a couple hours the Christmas lights and music came back on.

Stocking time - note those of the parents beside him. Books and books. That Santa is quite a fella!

We gave everyone in the family iPhoto picture albums from Tom's mother's birthday celebration, and what terrific responses we got - in person and via telephone. Each person had different photos, with a few common to everyone.
US and world maps were requested by our girl. Who knew ten years ago that she would be so thrilled by maps?!

Pondering what's inside of the incredibly light package... a picture of the new cell phone which will arrive in January!

Protective padding for snowboarding - which came in very handy the day after Christmas when he took a bad fall!

Blurry pic, but our daughter was very happy with her digital camera.

Afternoon's end

Black dogs in the evening light

Christmas evening sky

Book Report/A Dedicated Man

A Dedicated Man
by Peter Robinson
mystery, 1988
finished, 9/25/08

For a reason I can't quite understand, I have trouble writing about mysteries. Maybe because I don't want to spoil the plot? I don't really think so, since I'm quite careful about that. Perhaps I should just write the basics, and leave the review at that. I'm going to give it a try, even if I'm not successful because I just adore Peter Robinson's mysteries. For the life of me I can't understand why BBC or PBS has never made them into series like Frost or Dalgliesh or Maigret. I love those productions, as I do Blue Murder and George Gently.

Anyhow, back to Inspector Banks. He is such a good character - a regular fellow who can't stop smoking (at least in the early mysteries) and drinks too much on occasion, and is smitten by women other than his wife. But he is so much more. He's thoughtful and kind and caring. He notices the beauty of the Yorkshire Dales he has chosen for his home. He really thinks things through, and we the readers benefit from this because we puzzle alongside him, wondering what the heck is going on. In A Dedicated Man, second in the series, he knows that if he could have figured out the case earlier, a life would have been saved. The story is that a man is found dead, and he isn't one of those characters in a mystery that everyone hated. He was liked, accepted, and no one can figure out why he would be murdered. Of course as the book goes on, we learn more about the people in his circle of friends, and at the end, come upon the murderer.

There's an interview with the author which I just loved here.

My Grown-Up Christmas List

Christmas Eve Icicles

The books are bought

The shopping is done, and these are the books I bought. A few were from Santa to me. :<)

Out of the Blackout by Robert Barnard
Double Negative by David Carkeet
Christmas is Murder by C.S. Challinor
The Arsenic Labyrinth by Martin Edwards
The Cipher Garden by Martin Edwards
One Sunday Morning by Amy Ephron
The Private Patient by P.D. James
2 copies Little Heathens by Mildred Armstrong Kalish
The Excursion Train by Edward Marston
The Railway Detective by Edward Marston
Million Dollar Baby by Amy Patricia Meade
Rosie O'Donnell's Crafty U: 100 Easy Projects the Whole Family Can Enjoy All Year Long
Touché: Why Britain and France Are So Different and Why They Do Things in Opposite Ways by Agnés Catherine Poirier
Death in the Morning by Sheila Radley
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
The Library Paradox by Catherine Shaw
2 copies The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell
The House on Tradd Street by Karen White

Decorations inside and out

December 23

Christmas cards written and mailed √

Tree decorated √

Presents wrapped √

House decorated √

Tom's Weather Journal - December 22

There is something about a good snowstorm that delights the soul. We started hearing predictions of a big one at the end of last week, and sure enough on the solstice it arrived. The nor'easters that roar up the Atlantic coast sometimes don't give us much snow at our house. The shadow effect of the White Mountains can make all that snow drop on the eastern side of the Presidential range, leaving us wondering what all the fuss was about and let down because we didn't get snowed in. But I was pretty sure that the forecast for a good slug of snow would be accurate--the storm was coming from the southwest. It started about 10 AM Sunday, and as I write this on Monday afternoon we're still in flurries on the tail end of it. I estimate we got about a foot, adding to the 4" that was already on the ground. The town plow was up twice yesterday and then again at 4:30 this morning.




I heard the wind blow strong and loud for a while last night. When I got up I could see evidence of just how windy it was by looking at the icicles outside of our laundry room window. The bigger icicles had a distinct lean to them. It was clear that steady wind had been blowing from the west when the icicles were forming. If you look carefully at the bottom of the longest icicle in the photo, you can see it straightening out again as the wind diminished. Pretty neat.


I went to my favorite Mac weather program, Seasonality, and could see the graph of when the wind shifted. At just about midnight last night the wind shifted strongly into the west (bottom graph). At the same time, the wind speed picked up, reaching its peak speed of 35 mph at about 4:30 AM (middle graph).

Rewarding

After writing 29 cards this snowy, snowy day, I was rewarded by turning on the CBC and hearing the MOST wonderful show. It is called Cross Country Checkup and today's program was all about books. People from all over Canada, including the co-owner of a mystery bookstore, Sleuth of Baker Street, called in talking about books they have loved. I was in booklover's heaven. In a while, the list will be up on this site, and there are booklists from other shows.

Quote du jour/Lao Tzu

Time is a created thing.
To say, 'I don't have time,' is like saying, 'I don't want to.'
Lao Tzu

Saturday Sally/December 20

I haven't done a Saturday Sally in way too long. Here are three great places to stop in and visit.

Robin has the nicest piece on her mother who has just retired from her volunteer job as book group leader.

Dulce Domum offers a wealth of information on foods from past times.

And check out the adorable ears on Eva's new cat!

Quote du jour/from Mrs. Appleyard's Winter Kitchen

Although the state of Vermont is mentioned, this could be true of hostesses and their guests in any snowy clime.

Vermont hostesses can always tell when winter guests arrive because they hear them stamping snow off their boots on the porch. It is etiquette for the hostess to say, politely, but insincerely,
"Don't mind the snow. Come right in,"
and for the guest to reply, hopping on one foot:
"No, no: I'll leave them here."

Mrs. Appleyard's Winter Kitchen
by Louise Andrews Kent and Elizabeth Kent Gay