Category: Archives

Leah spilled her oatmeal as she carried her bowl from the dining room to the kitchen.

I heard the splat.

I sighed and grabbed a wet wash cloth.

“Hey, Mom! Look! It landed in the shape of a heart!” she said.

She took the washcloth out of my hand and cleaned it up by herself.

I hugged her and swallowed hard as my contacts started to blur. What if I had yelled at her when I heard the oatmeal fall? I might have missed out on this moment, and she may have been afraid to spill and make mistakes in the future — the opposite of what I want for her.

Yesterday, Aiden, who earlier in the day had adamantly insisted that his parents don’t love him, got a monster thorn in his foot. He limped home, crying.

I tweezed it out of his very dirty foot, and then washed and dried his feet.

He climbed into my lap (he doesn’t really fit anymore.. it was more like being sat upon, but I didn’t mind at all) and put his arms around my neck and said, “Thanks, Mom. I DO know you love me.” His words had really hurt me, and they were apparently still on his conscience. What if he hadn’t stepped on the thorn? Would he have had a chance to make things right? What if I had yelled at him and refused to help because of his negligence for not wearing shoes outside?

In my childbirth class last night, the last one of the 12 week series, there was discussion over how disgusting it will be to change diapers. “Yeah, but you’re not just changing diapers, you are showing your kids you love them,” I said. “You are showing them you’re there for them even when they stink the most.” I hope my students remember this at 3am when they are down to their last diaper in the pack and are washing crib sheets.

If we just go through motions without love, overly-sugared spilled oatmeal, up-the-back poopy diapers, and why-aren’t-you-wearing-shoes-while-you-play-outside?!?! foot thorns can be pretty annoying.

Be thankful for and make the most of every opportunity, and humble yourself enough to allow the spills, stink and stickers get to your heart.

I need to be reminded of this, too.

Found this salamandar and its eggs under a brick in my yard. We kept the salamander for about eight weeks and I let him go before I went to visit Tom in the UK. I love that my children enjoy little creatures like this, and help to take care of them. Salamanders like to eat ants. Every time we found ants, Leah would grab the salamander jar and put as many into it as possible, pushing them back in as they tried to scale the walls to escape. “No, you are Salamander food! Get back in there!”

This is one of my favorite egg dishes, which I concocted while living in Northern Japan. I’m thankful for the International food aisle at our local grocery store, so I can still enjoy this while living in Pennsylvania!

Not only is this an amazing, easy, flavorful meal… it’s Atkins friendly :) By individually adding the ingredients into My Fitness Pal, I found this recipe has 312 calories, 21 grams of protein and 4 carbs.

Recipe

Whisk together:

3 large Eggs

1 tsp of quality soy sauce

1/4 tsp Japanese curry powder

3 small sliced sautéed *mushrooms

Pour into a pan, and sauté like ordinary scrambled eggs. Do not overcook.

Top with snips of nori.

*Shiitake mushrooms make this dish taste more authentic, but any kind will do. Brown button mushrooms were used for the batch in the photo.

Last night, Tom and I went to see the Brandywine Roller Girls’ All Stars in Elkton, MD. While we had wanted to attend, we had a lot of work to do yesterday and actually going was a last minute decision. This meant that I was in a bit of a scramble for dinner… again.

I skimmed through my pantry and fridge, and whooped with delight over my remaining buy-one-get-one-free London Broil.

Utilizing the fast-acting magic of my trusty pressure cooker, below is the recipe I came up with… and it was so yummy, I had to write down for posterity’s sake.

This well-seasoned stew that tastes like it’s been roasting all day long. (Shh! It does! Pressure cookers really are magical!) The thickened stick-to-your-ribs broth is way more enjoyable than plebeian clear pan juices, not to mention much more fun to mop with a crusty piece of bread.

When washed down with some frothy autumn ale, you might even feel a bit rustic while you enjoy this meal and, for a moment at least, forget that your heating bills are about to increase.

Sarah’s Mustard & Herb Beef Stew

(Pressure Cooker – Approx. 30 min total cook time)
10 Servings

Main ingredients:
3 lbs London Broil, cut into 2″ cubes (Beef roast or other stew meat would work, too!)
4 lg celery stalks, cut into 2″ pieces
4 lg carrots, cut into 2″ pieces
10 medium thin-skinned potatoes, halved
1 large onion, thinly sliced
32 oz beef broth

Flavoring ingredients:
2-3 TB brown mustard
2 TB Worcestershire sauce
5 fresh sage leaves
2 bay leaves
1 tsp dried Italian seasoning

Prepare in Ziplock bag and SAVE remainder:
2 cups flour
2 tsp salt
1 TB garlic powder
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Cooking oil

Directions:
In small batches, place cubed beef into Ziplock bag and shake to coat with flour mixture. SAVE the remaining flour mixture!

Pour oil into the pressure cooker pot Рenough to coat the surface. When the oil is hot, saut̩ the onions to al dente. Remove the onions with metal tongs and set them aside in a mixing bowl.

Brown the floured beef in the hot oil in small batches until the meat has a bit of crusty goodness. Place browned meat in the bowl with the onions.

Deglaze the fond with the beef broth. Whisk in mustard, Worcestershire and dried herbs. Add remaining flavoring ingredients and bring to a boil. TASTE and adjust seasoning (salt may be needed if your broth is bland) as needed.

Add to pot in this order: Beef cubes & onions, potatoes, carrots & celery. (The majority of the potatoes should be covered with the broth.)

Bring to a boil.

Secure pressure cooker lid and cook on high heat until the pressure regulator begins to rock. Lower the heat to medium, or enough to keep the regulator rocking gently.

Set the timer for 15 minutes.

Follow the procedures in your pressure cooker’s instruction manual to quickly depressurize your pot.

Using a colander, separate the cooked meat and veggies from the broth. Return the broth to the pot. Scoop out about 1 cup of broth into your mixing bowl and whisk in about 3 Tb of the reserved seasoned flour mixture. Add the flour slurry back into the pot of broth, and bring it to a boil to thicken.

Add the cooked ingredients back to the thickened broth.

Serve steaming hot with crusty bread and your favorite autumn beer.

On going inside to examine the moth, I found a large female Eacles
Imperialis, with not a scale of down misplaced. Even by gas light
I could see that the yellow of the living moth was a warm canary
colour, and the lavender of the mounted specimen closer heliotrope
on the living, for there were pinkish tints that had faded from the
pinned moth.

She was heavy with eggs, and made no attempt to fly, so I closed
the box and left her until the lights were out, and then removed the
lid. Every opening was tightly screened, and as she had mated, I did
not think she would fly.
– excerpt from Moths of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter

All the way from the road, as my sister-in-law Liz and I pulled up to my house after a girls’-night-out, we could see this yellow winged creature clinging to my front screened door. This moth, a female, is so enormous, it looks like a bat who narrowly escaped after nearly drowning in a pail of yellow paint.

When I was a little girl, my parents took our family on a homeschool field trip to the homestead of naturalist and pioneer female photographer Gene Stratton-Porter. We walked through the lush green Limberlost trails and climbed the very steep stairs of her Indiana cabin.

The memory of my childhood trip was vividly recalled during the search to identify my incredible catch, when I stumbled upon an e-copy of Moths of the Limberlost, of which Porter devoted an entire chapter to this particular species.

Isn’t it amazing how her description still perfectly details the “Yellow Emperor”, as she fondly called it, almost 100 years later?