Friday, December 19, 2008

p.s. if you feel like bawling your eyes out...and pound cake

....get your hands on the movie "p.s. I Love You"

It was the sole reason (besides the three cups of coffee I had after supper and an amazing pound cake with warm lemon sauce and ice cream dessert, but, more about that later....) I was up until nearly 2 a.m.  Ahem.  Yes, I said 2 a.m.  I've been mean and cranky all day.

If you need a good cry, watch this movie.  Oh, and it's different from the book, so try not to compare the endings.  Although, since I'm unable or unwilling (debatable) to take my own advice, I preferred the books' ending.  I knew you wanted to know.  (wink, wink!)

About that pound cake.  A good friend of mine recently asked me if I knew why "they" called pound cake, "Pound Cake".  And I told her that I thought it was because in the olden days, there was a pound of everything in it.  Butter, Eggs, and Flour, and...Sugar?  Anyway.  I got nosy about it and decided to investigate, and this is what I found.    

My cake, compliments of C&H Sugar,  didn't look anything like theirs, but here is what it did look like:





My photography, as usual, isn't as stunning as hers, or hers, but I managed to snap a photo before it was all gone and miraculously got it from my camera to the computer, so I'm pleased.  Besides, I hear "out of focus" is the new pink.  Or was that brown.  Can't remember.  Must be the lemon fumes.

The lemon sauce is what really slams the door on this cake.  It is nearly drinkable by itself.  I tried it.  Don't think I didn't.  Of course, as you might have noticed the blackberries are missing but when our blackcaps come around next summer you can bet I'll be putting some of them up for occasions such as these..  The mint IS from a pot in my kitchen, it's gotten a little leggy - but it'll come around in the spring and really added another dimension to the taste of the cake and sauce. 

Yum-my.


Oh-Kay.  I have to go now.  Not because it's past my bed-time but  because I've posted a ridiculous amount  of posts today on the blog frontier and now I have to go, er...uh - wash my hair.



Surprise!


When my husband left the house the morning of my birthday without saying "Happy Birthday" I must admit, I wasn't singing his praises.  So, after a day of a being chauffered (sp?) to a doctor's appointment with Papa Lou and Eddie, then lunch, and some grocery shopping,  when I came home there was a birthday card and a HUGE box of chocolates waiting for me.  From my husband. 

Bubba and Wendy had cooked an entire delicious supper and then came the beautiful german cake.  And coffee.  And the neighbor. 



And the other neighbor.

And the OTHER neighbors.  And their parents!  And then, Becky, and her kids. (missed you Steve!)  And let us not forget the chocolate cake she brought. (she called it the "I don't need a man cake" and, I gotta say - if, God Forbid, I was sans husband, it might suffice, at least temporarily...) (please, no comments about the sans husband thing...I was only kidding.  seriously.)  But really.  The cake was THAT good.  

Huh? Wha?  OH! THIS IS A SURPRISE!!!  (I'm fast, I tell you....really quick to catch on....it only took me an hour)

And it was.  It was great.  I had the best birthday in a long, long time.  Thank You Becky for calling my husband and saying, "what are you doing for your wife's birthday?" and when he said "nothing", for saying, "well, you have to do something! Call your friends and neighbors and I'll make a cake."  Thank you very much.

(an aside:  come to find out, in a later and very much animated conversation and after being with my husband for over five years I FINALLY found out WHY he doesn't make a big deal over birthdays...that story will have to come later, probably after the "shit has followed us here" story...stay tuned.) 

And while we're rolling credits, thank you very much Wendy and Bubba for the wonderfully tasty supper and for every little (and big!) thing.  Just thinking of me, and taking the time is really most special.  

And now my computer will most likely officially crash and end this post.  At least the fan is going like crazy and it sounds like it's...fallen and can't get up.

So, let's see if I can get some more pictures on here, just to push the envelope.  

(just to let you know how I am self taught with computers - I will at some point, in the future, figure out WHY I have underlined text.....but not right now.  I think it has something to do with the uploading and sequential typing after of photographs..., but I digress)




Here we go.  This is better.




Hi !




Oh what a night.




Surrounded by young and old (aka: wise).  What a gift.





Happy Birthday to me!

One Crazy Night




I made these strawberry shortcakes.  Oh. Goodness. Me.

I thought I had once made a shortcake biscuit called a "cream" biscuit, but alas, in my 27 cookbooks I could not find the recipe.  So I made one up.  I can't remember how much of what was in it, but they were really, really good.  No, scratch that, they weren't good, they were phenominal.  But who am I to say.  

I'm looking forward to doing that again.  And again.  And again.

Life is Good


And I have proof.  

You know that old saying, that people come into your life for a "Reason, Season, or Lifetime" ?  I say that there are rare instances when there are people in your life for all of the above.  A line between the three can't be found.  It's permanent.  Immovable.  Immeasurable.  And most of all, I'm convinced that life is so good ~ because of the influence of God.

Don't get me wrong.  There is such a thing as hard times.  Things we don't understand.  But if you can, look past all that, have as many dinner parties as you can.  Smile.  Laugh heartily.  Smile again.  Smile some more.  Invite your friends over regardless of fish or potatoes.  Enjoy every facet.  Each nook and cranny of your friendship.  

It's true what they say.  Life is good.  

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

For No Apparent Reason

and, for your non-apparent (to me, anyway) enjoyment, a few photographs that catch my fancy:

















I've come to the conclusion that I'm missing summer a wee bit. The 21st of December isn't even here yet. Oh dear!









Tuesday, December 2, 2008

What we do here at Hope Farms on a Sunday morning

Help Dad dig fence-post holes.

Sit in fence-post holes.
Hmmmm.... What are you doing now? Oh - yes, I suppose you ought to get those boots out of there.











When I grow up

I want to be like this lady .

From the NY Times

August 25, 2003

Connie Reeves, a Cowgirl Until the End, Dies at 101

By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Connie Reeves, who was very likely America's oldest cowgirl, died in
San Antonio on Aug. 17, 12 days after she was thrown from her horse, Dr Pepper.
She was 101.

She was riding her favorite horse, a 28-year-old paint, on the morning
of Aug. 5 when Dr Pepper threw her over its head. Her neck was broken, but she
was not paralyzed, The Kerrville (Tex.) Daily Times reported. The Associated
Press said she died of cardiac arrest.

Meg Clark, owner of Camp Waldemar in the Texas Hill Country, where Mrs.
Reeves taught riding for 67 years, said she had been riding more this year than
in previous years and was delighted that Dr Pepper remained so spirited.

''That was how she wanted to live her life, and that was how she wanted
to end it,'' Ms. Clark said on Wednesday. ''She wanted to be on horseback.''

As a baby, Mrs. Reeves was photographed on a horse -- as well as on a
cow, something she could never quite explain -- and went on to manage a ranch
and teach about 30,000 girls to ride over the years at a summer camp. She could
herd steers, shear sheep, kill rattlesnakes and cook for hungry cowhands.

At first she did not think she deserved to be inducted into the
National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in 1997, but then decided she had as
much right as the next lady, given the things she had done and the things she
knew.

She knew, for example, that a horse could smell fear. When she ended up
with one leg shorter than the other after falling from a horse, she did the
sensible thing: she had the heel of one cowboy boot raised.

Mrs. Reeves's greatest fame came last year when Justice Sandra Day
O'Connor of the United States Supreme Court was inducted into the Cowgirl Hall
of Fame in Fort Worth. Reporters could not resist interviewing the hall's oldest
member, whom the event's organizers were more than willing to make available.

After all, a quotation from Mrs. Reeves, ''Always saddle your own
horse,'' had almost become the hall's motto. Liz Smith began a gossip column by
suggesting, ''It's not a bad motto, even if you are just getting into your
Mercedes.''

Many things Mrs. Reeves did seemed to make history, particularly in
Texas.

She was one of the first women to study law at the University of Texas,
and she started one of the state's first girls' drill teams, a movement that
grew into a Texas passion. The 10,000-acre ranch she and her husband managed was
owned by Lyndon B. Johnson.

In 1998, Mrs. Reeves won the Chester A. Reynolds Award for major
contributions to the Western way of life from the National Cowboy and Western
Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, one of two women to do so.

Constance Douglas was born on Sept. 26, 1901, in Eagle Pass, Tex., on
the Mexican border. She swam in the Rio Grande and rode horses with cowboys. Her
grandfather gave her her first horse when she was 5. The family moved to San
Antonio when she was 16.

Her father was a lawyer, and her mother was so genteel that she refused
to go to the grocer's without gloves and a hat.

Mrs. Reeves graduated from Texas Women's University in Denton as a
speech major and then attended the University of Texas School of Law, but left
to take a job because her family was short of money in the Depression. She
taught at two San Antonio high schools. At one, Thomas Jefferson High, she
founded a drill team called the Lassos, which is still in existence.

She also started a riding stable to teach city boys and girls how to
ride and care for horses. Although the stables were successful, she accepted a
position as riding instructor at Camp Waldemar in 1936 for $50 a summer. She
eventually taught Western and English riding styles to the granddaughters of her
original students.

She came to the conclusion that horses respond best to women.

''The harsh voices and rough bark of boys and men seem to frighten
horses,'' she wrote several weeks before her death in a script for a video about
riding. ''The same horse that refused to take the bit in its mouth will accept
it from the more gentle hands of a girl.''

At the camp she met Jack Reeves, a former rodeo star, trick rider and
keeper of the camp's horses. They married in 1942; he died in 1985. They had no
children, and she left no immediate survivors.

''I'm sure glad I don't have grandchildren,'' she said in an interview
with The Associated Press last year. ''The world today, it's disturbed.''

The cowgirl found her own peace on a horse.

''I still ride alone,'' Mrs. Reeves said in an interview with National
Public Radio last year. ''Sometimes I'll just get on the horse and go down to
the river. We'll just ride up and watch a little baby fawn nursing or watch the
birds in a nest.

"As long as I'm alive, I'm going to be trying to ride a horse.''

What is this leisure time of which you speak?

my grateful button