There's a party in my yard

We have visiting chipmunk, bunnies, and birds galore.  So far the chipmunk seems to cause the most damage - it's a pity, because he is the cutest little thing.  There are two sections to our garden, one follows a side wall of our apartment that we can't see.  It is south facing and I had high hopes for my tomato crop as they did well there last year.  Up until now, this was the most frequently visited area by the chipmunk.  Baby sunflowers and tomato seedlings were obliterated.  He had a good dig around our spring lettuce too, but they weren't really to his liking.

The other section of garden is by our front door.  It has a lot of produce, tomatoes, carrots, beans, peas, squash, cucumber, watermelon, cantaloupe, sunflowers, broccoli, ever-bearing strawberries, herbs, and a few flowers.  When I popped my head out this morning, all of the above mentioned animals were chilling on the grass.  They fled but Mr. Chipmunk has evidently found this garden.  There were several cavity dug and he may have eaten a carrot.  I am Farmer Brown, Mr. C., beware.

Carcassone insanity

I got Carcassone the big box for my birthday - it has five expansions.  To get free shipping on Jbird's anniversary gift, I bought him a sixth, the river.  Have you played it?  Do you love it?  

I'm a farm conqueror.  I tend to become fixated on having as many as possible, at the detriment of my roads, villages, and cloisters.  I find myself becoming very competitive and have taken to putting some rescue remedy in my water to help me calm down.  Because it's summer time, people have plenty of time for a game or two at the moment.

*If your item costs more than $25 on some Amazon items within America, you are offered free shipping

The requested recipe

I've had a couple of people ask for the lavender-blueberry popsicle recipe.  I have adapted it from lavender-huckleberry ice pops from Ice Pops by Shelly Kaldunski. 

1/3 C sugar

1 tspn unflavoured gelatin powder

1.5 tspn fresh lavender blossoms, finely chopped (pesticide free!)

*1/4 of lime's thinly peeled zest (try to avoid the pith)

1/4 C blueberries, fresh or frozen

*1/3 C (or less) freshly squeezed lemon juice

1/2 C + 1 C water

In a saucepan, combine sugar, gelatin, lavender, lemon zest, 1/2 C water.   Bring to boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally until the sugar has dissolved, boil off some water.  Add berries, continue to boil 1 or 2 minutes, lightly crushing some of the berries.  Allow to stand off the heat for 5 minutes.  Remove zest.  Add lemon juice and 1 C of water, stir to combine.  Cool to room temperature.  Pour into popsicle moulds and freeze.

*You may have to play around with the lemon/lime quantities to taste.

All that I can bear

Even though I have complained a lot about our never ending winters over the passed three years due to hemisphere-hopping, and I should be incredibly grateful to finally enjoy a full summer, I reserve the right to find this heat uncomfortable.  

Though we try not to run our AC for economic and environmental reasons, I have found myself becoming quite emotional the passed few hot afternoons, and have turned it on for sanity's sake.  This was despite frequent trips to the pool, sitting next to the fan, and icy water.  It seems hotter than Bangladesh but I know this can't be true.  I think my apartment there was better suited to the heat.  It was closer to the equater so the sun didn't hit the windows at an angle, was on the 4th floor and it got a lot of wind, had ceiling and floor fans everywhere, and cool marble floors.  In Bangladesh it rains every day which helps the temperature to drop.  We have not seen rain here for over a week.  Perhaps I was also more tolerant as I left the house regularly for work.

I would just like the temperature to drop a bit.  I have things to do and people to be nice to.  Maybe it's time to start having cold baths.

Lavender-huckleberry

It has been hot hot hot and Jbird and I are craving all things icy and cool.  Weirdly, I am not interested in making ice cream.  At all.  It's completely out of fashion on my to-do list.  I have made frappes and icy cocktails twice a day for more than a month so it's time to move into the weird and wonderful world of popsicles.  The Ice Pops book I got out of the library is very inspirational and today I tried lavender-huckleberry.  What's that, you say?  Lavender and huckleberry pair well?  Well, I've never heard of huckleberry but I have been dying to flavour a food item with home grown lavender ever since I bought a lavender plant at the local farmers market nearly two years ago.  As for the huckleberry, the Internet suggested blueberries as a substitution.  The recipe involved steeping lemon rind with the lavender and I improvised by adding a little unflavoured gelatin. 

Unfortunately, the dollar store popsicle mould just wasn't cutting it so we made a trip down to the local kitchen supply store with our $5 voucher and bought a high-tech mould.  Here's to popsicle moulds that hold their sticks and too many items in the plastics drawer.

T.V. gig

I worked on a t.v. ad. set when we were at home last American summer and here's the result.  It's probably been on telly in NZ for ages but I forgot to see if I could find it online. I was given a Prius for a few days and it was my job to drive the kids around and look after them on set.  I had to carry a walkie talkie and announce whenever we were moving around the set.  The boy was a real pro, he'd had a lot of experience and would act on command. It was pretty fun to go to the race track, the kids were easy to look after and fun to be around, and there was always a lot of nice food and a coffee cart, but I found it tedious as we tried to coach them into taking that bite and saying their line at the same time.  It took three days, one day on the race track and two at the house.  My bank balance thanked me.

Reflection on a grow-lamp

I met some hippies at a market recently.  They offered me a free watermelon plant, heard my accent, asked where I came from, and wondered if I could give them access to some specific Tasmanian plant they wanted to grow.  I told them probably not, as we belong to different countries, but we got talking despite their slight geographical confusion.  

Our conversation ambled around gardens, growing, indoor growing, hydroponics.  I even learnt a thing or two about transplanting (light shocks roots, do it at night time).  I asked them about the lack of Vitamin D offered from growing indoors.  Apparently the indoor lighting provides enough that it's even noticeable in their own lack of seasonal affective disorder (SAD) which I have become familiar with during my time in the States.  They then suggested I buy a water-bed as it is a pre-lined container perfect for growing indoor plants, or at least set up a kitchen and bathroom garden.  They obviously haven't seen the size of our bathroom but I told them I'd talk to Jbird.

There are many reasons to grow indoors: containers can be made to self water so that water is reused efficiently, you can grow year-long without worry about frost and snow killing your plants, and now I hear SAD is all but wiped out from your own feeble human condition.  These things aside, I love the hardiness of an outdoor plant, and the reliance on natural conditions which allow it to grow.  We finally had a good rain last night and this morning all these tiny little wild flower seedlings, and larger more dramatic bean seedlings, are unfolding from the earth of a new bed I planted just last week.  Rain always seems to bring 'em out.  I'm not convinced, but I may consider putting a growing lamp in my study, for my own winter blues and perhaps to help the meyer lemon. 

The B-Line

The Bloomington Bike Gang has had a chance to reform because two of the members are on new relaxed summer vaca. schedules.  We have often been told to experience the recently opened B-line trail.  It's a flat 3-mile trail on what used to be a main train line into town.   The downtown area is nice with some some locally made artwork, and just less than 2 miles of it is a pretty field with grasses, wild flowers, and trees, ending at a river. It doesn't compare to New York's ex-rail park The Highline which is an amazing feat and work of art.  The first time we went to that park it was newly opened, wintery and quiet.  The second time, even though it was a work day,  there were queues just to get up to it and then every spare inch was taken with people (ahhhhh....New York).  The B-line was lovely and quiet with just a school group visiting the science lab and a few other adults walking or running it.  I'd like to get my hands on the rather neglected man-made gardens in the downtown area.

It was such a nice day, we were all in summery clothes, and we were relaxed and happy.  It felt like a scene from the movie My Girl except that we're at least 20 years her senior.  The trail itself isn't hard but combined with the route there and back, it made a pretty decent trip, out and about on our bikes just for fun.

The dirty life in true events

On Friday, Jbird and I attended another international student event.  I am always a little apprehensive about these events beforehand, whether I'll enjoy my time, and have anyone to talk to.  The cons of going seem to outweigh the pros yet I tell myself to go and attend with a mixture of both scepticism and enthusiasm.  At least I have Jbird, he's in it for the free food and the games.  I ended up being happy I went despite my scepticism, finding a community of people that lean on each other for support and have not-being-American in common.

The event on Friday was a picnic at a 'real American farm'.  Can you hear my sarcasm?  I was sarcastic because of the need to authenticate the farm by calling it 'real' and 'American'.  I guess I'm not used to being treated alongside a group of other internationals.  I also think a lot of the people that attended may have never visited a farm before while I lived on one until I was 5 when we moved to the city.  Then I visited it bi-weekly. 

It was a family farm, not far from here. And it was exciting.  These people are growing their food they way it should be grown.  The grass grows waste high, they keep all the animals in one section of a paddock but they move them every day to a new section.  If the weather's good, it can take them up to 90 days to return to that first section.  They're eating grass the way it was meant to grow: tall with long roots.  When the animals have been moved, the roots fall off, and the chickens are put on their old section to scratch up all the seeds, preparing it to sprout fresh grass.  They're happy on that section because they're omnivores and it's covered in left-over grass seeds and bugs that have come for the dung.

Do you remember my recommendation for the book: The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball?  It made me want to grow more than a few mere vegetables.  This farm wasn't the size of the farm in Kristin's book, but it was as inspirational.  It was neat to be on such a farm after I'd spent all that time enjoying the story of one. 

Whippin' up some cream

When I made the Strawberry Shortcake last week, I finally followed Julia Child's advice and hand-whipped the cream over an ice bath.  I had previously thought she was a little bit silly to be so devoted to this technique.  It seemed tedious to set up the ice bath, tiring on your whipping arm, and time consuming.  But now I understand.  It doesn't take all that long, around five minutes.  The cream is whipped evenly, instead of stiff peaks on top and runny liquid underneath as often happens with hand held beaters.  Without that noisy machine in my hands, I was more in tune with the cream's consistency, producing a glorious result.

Speaking of which, I also followed allrecipe.com's advice on whipping egg whites when I was making the sponge cake.  They suggest you do it over a bath of simmering water because warmer egg whites bind better.  On their suggestion, I was careful to stop before they were dry and they were right!  My egg whites folded into the cake mixture beautifully, without little islands and spots of egg white breaking away.

The joys of following good advice.

My stories are ending

It is a sad time in t.v. land, all my shows are having their season finales.  Thankfully it's so nice and warm out, they won't leave too much of a hole in my life.   

I'm a comedy girl.  I love equally and uniquely How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, The Middle, Parks and Recreation, The Office, New Girl, Modern Family, and Family Guy.  P&C and The Middle are both filmed in Indiana.  It's nice to know we're not the only ones stuck out here in corn country.

Happy Anniversary to us

It's three years today since our wedding day and we're celebrating with food.  Scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, and lovely coffee for breaky.  Lamb chops and new potatoes tonight, with a New Zealand Sav Blanc from Cupcake. Home made strawberry shortcake for dessert.  I have this Julia Child how-to for assembling it and I finally found a real sponge cake recipe which is written for American ingredients - or I think it is.  I used these sponge cake tips. The only thing I feel slightly guilty about is not using cake flour but they turned out very light and fluffy.  I have very high hopes for that dessert.  Jbird tells me I'm an emotional cook...whatever that means.   Maybe it's something to do with loving all things food and getting exciting about making most things food? 

We'll eat out tomorrow night because there's a Thursday night special at our favourite local family restaurant. I was late ordering him a gift so I've got him something small for today while we wait for his pressie to arrive in the post. I'm finally coming out of the essay writing duldrums and Jbird's on holiday time so we should have a pretty nice day together.  

It's nice to have a random holiday, all to us.  It's only our third one so we're still getting used to it.

Breaking Away

Would you like to see a little picture of where we live?  Find and watch the movie: Breaking Away.  

I want to talk about it in more detail than I can without giving away too much of the story line.  It's based in and around Bloomington and the Indiana University campus (here in Bloomington) in 1979.  Dennis Quaid is one of the young actors.  He manages to come across as a fairly angry sort, I didn't enjoy his performance very much.  If I were to give an award for best actor, it would be to Dennis Christopher.  He's gorgeous, naive, funny, true to his friends.  I guess I'm unsold on whether the award would go to him or to the person who wrote his character but surely a lot of it was him.  The little 500, a historically important bike race at IU, is a big feature of the film, and more specifically, the inequalities between townies (or 'cutters' as they were called back then) and the students.  It felt very appropriate for me with all this talk on democracy I've been doing with a couple of my classes.  Oh, and the scenery is just what I see every day so if you find this movie, you won't even have to come visit, you'll see it all there.  I guess it's the 1979 version of what we see and walk in, but it's very similar.

Watch it, if you can find it, and tell me what you think.

Wife of a pianist

Jbird is learning four concertos for next year.  One of them is Mozart's 20th piano concerto.  Just in case you were wondering, he only really learns concertos for competitions.  I never thought about this in my pre-Jbird  life.  Next year, there are three competitions at IU.  The fourth is for an "ad hoc", a student orchestra will accompany him in concert.

I was teasing him the other day: Four concertos, really?  He reply was: One of them's Mozart, Annabel.  You know the trick about Mozart?  He writes easy music.  Easy for some! He's madly practising it now, faster than I'd ever be able to play it.  Fancy pants.  Mozart's music is full of pretty runs and trills and normal keys, making for a nice listen.  He sometimes plays 'music' I just about need to leave the house for, it's too loud, or atonal, or just annoying.  The Beethoven sonata he played for his last recital has the most repetivite rondo, I felt like he was a stuck record.  Such is the journey.  I'm looking forward to all the concerts, wish you could be here.

A thank-you card

Happy Mother's Day, Mum.  Thanks for teaching me to read, helping me practice violin, piano, and viola, Friday nights at the library, lazy Saturday mornings, fruit off the tree and veges from the garden, knitting and sewing my clothes, taking me to the beach, camping, bach holidays, flying kites, fostering my love for coffee, enabling my love for coffee, knickers in the post, helping me to be here, loving us.

Happy Mother's Day, Mum-in-law.  Thanks for dreaming big dreams for your boy and putting in the hours, surfing holidays, conversation, coffee and chocolate, lamb roasts, supporting us, loving us.

We miss you both.

Delicious Chilli and Corn Bread

My go-to I don't know what to cook meal these days is this yummy black bean and tomato chilli with fresh home-made corn bread.  Actually, is there any other kind of corn bread?  I've never bought it in a store.  

If you try the chilli recipe, you'll see why.  The addition of cumin is welcome in most savoury dish, but there's also that little added something with the raw tomatoes, raw garlic, and balsamic vinegar dressing to really make your taste buds tingle.  I sometimes mash half teaspoon of raw diced onion into an avocado and sit while everything's cooking to use as a topping later.

I use this corn bread muffin recipe, it's quicker than the chilli, so get the chilli cooking before starting the muffins.

heat oven to 450 degrees F or 230 degrees C

1/2 C flour

1/2 C corn flour

2 tspns baking powder

1/8 C sugar

1/3 tspn salt

Sieve and combine

1/2 C milk

1 egg

1/8 C oil

Add, whisk together for about a minute.  Pour into muffin tray.  Bake around 20 minutes until starting to brown.  Makes 6.  We slice them in half and toast to eat with left over chilli for about a week afterwards. Adapted from an allrecipes.com recipe.

The Introduction

I just wrote a pretty nice introduction.  I don't know if I'll use it because I wrote it before I wrote any of the body of the essay, and it might read too much like a narrative.  However, at the moment it makes a lot of sense to me and I'm glad because not much of anything else was making any sense.  I like it enough to put it here just in case it doesn't make the final cut.

When considering this essay choice, it was hard to clarify what ‘cultural background’ meant.  I kept emphasising the word ‘cultural’ to myself, considering what culture might mean.  I don’t believe people are ever a single culture.  In my own life I have always identified as a Pakeha/European, it seemed essential to who I am.  Yet I moved to the USA to find that I am not that here.  Here, I use my country descriptor, New Zealander or Kiwi.  Neither ‘Pakeha’ nor ‘European’ would make sense to an American. 

It made me think: Well, what is a Pakeha?  Why are we European?  I have heritage but I know the move from rural to urban in my early life affected me in tangible ways while I'm unlikely to consider who my great-great-grandparents were.   After some research, a definition was found which satisfied my unease: “For each individual student the intersection of social class, ethnicity, and gender can markedly influence cultural practices, preferences, and prior experiences.”  (Alton-Lee, 2003).  I came to realise that the word ‘background’ needed more emphasis.  It alludes to what has been, and what is but is not necessarily seen, to influences on a life.  etc. etc.

Alton-Lee, A. (2003). Quality Teaching for Diverse Students in Schooling: Best Evidence Synthesis Iteration (BES). Wellington, N.Z.: Medium Term Strategy Policy Division, Ministry of Education. 

Grumpy grump grump grump...mmmm...cream

I was feeling really grumpy and hot the other day.  I know this is going to happen a lot, even though I spend all winter dreaming about summer.  At least I never dream about winter during the summer, just the ocean.

To force myself out of the grumps, I decided to get out of the house.  So I biked off to Target where I enviously watched a girl leave the store with an icy Starbucks frappuccino in her hands.  It was then that I reminded myself that I am allowed to turn the AC on at home if I want to, it's my own stubborn budgeting that stops me from doing so, AND I can make a perfectly decent frappuccino at home any time I want for a fraction of the price.   So I high-tailed it out of there and did just that.  

Normally my home made ones aren't as good as store bought ones because I don't want to add nearly as much milk, cream, chocolate sauce, or sugar.  That particular day I thought "Stuff it, I'm doing it" and did. Whipped cream and chocolate sauce topping and everything.

Here's the recipe I used, you can play around with amounts to suit you, including the type of milk you choose to add.  I put in 2% (light blue in NZ) and it was pretttty creamy and delicious.  I'm thinking of freezing some milk into ice cubes to make it an even thicker icy consistency after blending.

Like store-bought frappuccino:

One shot double strength espresso

1.5 Cups ice

2 tbspns sugar or chocolate syrup for mocha (you only need this much if you want it to be as sweet as they give it to you).

1/2 Cup milk (most recipes suggest 3/4 C)

Blend above ingredients

Topping: whipped cream and chocolate syrup

A busy silly week

This week is a busy week.  I'm simultaneously 'at-home-mum' to two little rugrats and writing two assignments (I handed the first of three in last Saturday).  They are at daycare for a few hours each day but I can't write while they're awake and with me.  It's my job, after all, to care for them and entertain them.  These work hours popped up out of nowhere so I thought I should take them, even though I'm busy with school, as our work will probably diminish considerably over the summer.  How do you mums do it?  I guess I'm used to the quiet life style, where my own procrastinating ways are the only thing standing in my way.

Democracy in life

Two of my classes are focussing on democracy in schools.  I guess it's the go-to phrase at the moment.  I think it's been a popular idea for years now, I feel as though I am very slow to catch on.

It's all about being accepting of student's viewpoints, really hearing what they have to say, taking it on board, and even portraying it in our own actions.  I was worried that it was a tad humanist, as some of the authors portray it in their humanist educational models, but I have been able to place it into my Christian world view through James' teaching of a foundational lesson in favouritism.  It's easy for us to 'look up' to certain people and to 'look down' on others too.  We don't even have to say anything to do this, we can merely think it.

I have been reflecting on my reactions to my most beloved (Jbird) and realise that I'm not always very democratic in our marriage.  It's a pretty helpful insight.  Just because I don't like something, doesn't mean it's wrong and that I need to convince him of my point of view.  I can tell him, but I ought to listen (really listen) to his point of view too.  Plus, get this, he shouldn't have to tell me what his viewpoint is, he can choose to keep it to himself.

Yes.  It took me three years to realise this. <sigh> I'm just a baby! I'm not saying I've been a dictator in our marriage, either!  Though some of you may sometimes wonder.

Lettuce on my sammy

I forgot to tell you, about a week ago our lettuce was ready to be eaten!  It is the most lovely thing to pop out and pick a few leaves for our sandwiches everyday.  As quick as I pick, more leaves grow.  I planted a variety of flavours and colours and we have some dill ready too.  I never would have thought I'd like dill until I grew it myself and got to taste that particular bitey flavour representing something I'd grown myself. I feel a little bit silly being so pleased with myself as this is a common occurrence for so many people, but I am anyway.

Guilty as charged

Oh. Dear. We went to the dollar shop to buy a vase and came away with a bag of twizzlers.  Jbird went off to a recording session and the twizzlers have all gone.  All of them.  In my belly.  Don't worry, I'm paying for it.  The dollar shop isn't closed yet.  Should I go and buy some more?  That way he'll never know.  But then I'll eat that packet too...

A Complicated Application

One of my jobs as the wife in this family is to apply each year for the diversity visa.  This visa is provided to ensure the US is accepting a diverse new residents.  Countries such as Bangladesh, the UK, Canada, and Korea are not offered this visa as they have been assigned a large number of greencards already.  

The process involves US government officials pulling names out of a hat and granting greencards to who are pulled.  I make it sound so easy but there are many hurdles along the way.  

The first hurdle is to read and understand their website to work out the application procedure.  Official websites are not always very user friendly, it took me a good week to work out that even though they give very lengthy, repetitious instructions, all they were looking for was a square photo with no shadows, glare, or smile.  

The second hurdle is to apply at the right time.  The application is only open for the month of October each year and we were too late to apply in 2009.  

The third hurdle is to provide the aforementioned appropriate photo.  This can take some dedication but I've done it twice now and even do it for other New Zealanders, so that this is not a hurdle for them too.  

The actual application involves merely uploading said photo and knowing your birth date and full name.  

The fourth hurdle is to be able to receive the notification of the result.  Mail, we were informed, was the only way we would be contacted.  We applied in 2010 but we moved states during the month we might have heard so we weren't 100% that our names hadn't been pulled. 

For some reason I decided to check the website yesterday and found that there was a function where we could check our status for that first, mysterious application we had made!  This was a delightful thing to come across as it was the last day it would be available because today the new 'winners' will start being announced.

The last hurdle is to save your confirmation number.  My heart missed a beat when I couldn't find ours saved in gmail but they'd been squirreled away into My Documents in a most unorderly manner, without even a folder to call their own. 

Don't get your hopes up, we didn't win that lottery, but it was neat to confirm this, instead of just always wondering.  Results are announced during May and June so there's barely a wait before we'll know whether we win it this year!