• Dear Mom - Food, Glorious Food

    Carrot Cake Recipe : Alton Brown : Srsly Good Eats

    Carrot Cake : Alton Brown So this was the recipe that I started with to take to Mitch and Gloria’s on New Year’s Day. I originally thought I’d bake it as a bundt cake, but didn’t have a pan. However, I did have a springform pan, and I jazzed it up with some chopped pecans and a little orange juice/butter/rum sauce that I reduced down by half. I didn’t really have a recipe for the sauce, just started with about half and half rum and orange juice, with a couple of tablespoons (or more) of butter, with just a little…

  • Dear Mom - Today

    Happy Snowy New Year

    A cold white blanket of snow covers Burbclavia; we managed to get to the gathering place to celebrate the new year with family and eat yummy chili with all the extras, and the obligatory lox ‘n bagels. My nephew Josh is in town and brought his girlfriend Ashley; FIL Shel and Linda made the trek and so did my BIL Dan and his girlfriend Tammy. Mitch and Gloria put on a really nice buffet and of course Rosie the pooch princess provided entertainment. Things got raucous (or at least very loud) when Josh showed us this crazy trivia game called…

  • Dear Mom - Today

    A Pleasant Good Night

    The weird warm weather continues. I’m getting the idea that it might be better to plan for a cool weather biking and walking vacation in late January than count on a cross-country ski vacation. We’re thinking of going someplace in Michigan, but plans are vague yet. After a lazy Sunday afternoon (David did go for a bike ride) we went to his dad’s so David could sign the mat for a photo he’s having framed for Shel. It’s another in a series of landscape photos – kind of high end “my kid’s art on the fridge,” if you will. It’ll…

  • Dear Mom - Today

    It’s Donut Day Somewhere, And I’m Having A Moms’ Day Here

    According to the Facebooks, my sister Timmy is enjoying the first major snowfall of the season up in her pretty Idaho Panhandle valley, and my sister Tudy reports a bunch of heavy, wet snow in Salt Lake. Today must be Donut Day, as we say in the fambly: the day Mom would make homemade donuts to celebrate the first snow of the season. Going to Krispy Kreme would not cut it; Mom used to make a fairly dense deep-fried donut that was a solid dunker, not one of those greasy loops of yeasty puff that Krispy Kreme makes. I remember…

  • Dear Mom - Today

    I Have Become The Mean Neighbor Lady I Hated As A Child #fb

    Once upon a time in my childhood, my year revolved around the “kid holidays;” the beginning of “school’s out” for summer, Halloween, and Christmas. In my candy-addled mind at the time, Halloween loomed pretty large – not quite as big a deal as Christmas, but one in which kids were kind of autonomous. We had to work for the biggest candy haul possible, whether we or our parents made our own costumes or had store bought ones. The year I was old enough to go out trick-or-treating on my own was probably when I was… 7 or 8, although I…

  • Blogs Wot I Read - Funnies - Today

    How to Lose an Hour of your Life: Cat Bounce

    Tune in your favorite trippy space music or techno-trance Internet radio station Go to this link. WHAT time is it? I was in a hell of a mood before I found Zen in Cat Bounce. Be sure to make it rain now and then for extra-soothing cat bounciness. Cat Bounce is a website where you can make cats bounce. It’s totally mesmerizing and I’m pretty sure it’s an advanced hypnosis technology that was put in place by the cat army to finally have complete control. via Cat Bounce Has Been Sent From the Future to Ensure Total Cat Domination

  • Blogs Wot I Read - Politics, Schmolitics

    Eisenhower warns modern #GOP not to be negligible and stupid #FromTheGrave

    This excellent quote from President Dwight D. Eisenhower (R-Reality) was buried in the comments of the Daily Kos post on the Medicaid issue gaining traction. It would be very interesting to see either Romney or Ryan squirm while attempting to comment on this. Their rigidly imposed frame of reference prevents them from seeing that the GOP is in danger of becoming just such a negligible, stupid party, if it hasn’t already. The original commenter’s blog is called Condemned To Repeat It “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you…

  • Blogs Wot I Read - Politics, Schmolitics

    Romney Social Media Staffer Bill Murphy Linked In To Fraudulent Profitable Tea Party Non-Profit

    This is juicy, if a little opaque to the non-Tweety, non-Bloggy, non-Facebooky clueless unlikely voter. The telling point is that he deleted his Linked In profile rather than answer tricky questions about whether his work for the organization would be part of his professional resume. Hat tip: OsborneInk Team Romney’s Social Media Director, Bill Murphy, is the former Director of the National Bloggers Club, a group under IRS investigation for soliciting donations while falsely claiming to be a non-profit organization. Although NBC filed incorporation papers in January, the organization is still absent from both the IRS and GuideStar charity databases.…

  • Connections

    Elderly Mom Still Advocating For Downs Syndrome Son, And Other Disabled

    There’s no better advocate for disabled kids and adults than fully engaged, lovingly encouraging parents. And when they’re no longer there for them, it’s up to the state — and some states are better advocates than others. From the moment Marjorie Sullivan Lee learned her newborn son, Kevin, had Down syndrome she became his advocate. Dismissing her pediatrician’s suggestion that Kevin be placed in an institution, Lee and her husband, John, decided Kevin would grow up at home with his five older siblings and be part of the community. That wasn’t necessarily the norm in 1960. Lee battled school officials…