Alabama

Nickname:  Heart of Dixie

Capital:  Montgomery

State Bird:  Northern flicker

State Flower: Cameillia

Alabama anchored the Confederate States of America and led in being the first to secede in 1861.  The name of the state comes from an old Indian name, “Alibamu.” 

Alabama is a state of mostly low rolling plains with a Black Belt of rich, dark soil spanning the middle.  This is why Alabama was known for its cotton way back before the Civil War.  This ended in the 1920s when the boll weevil destroyed the cotton harvest.  This demanded more variety in agriculture, hence peanuts, sweet potatoes, and pecans are now main crops in Alabama.  There are many chickens and pond-raised catfish.  Vast stands of oak and pine support a giant forest products industry.    There are more turkeys per acre in Alabama than any other state in the U.S.  (but another state is the top producer of turkey – figure that one out.)

African American botanist George Washington Carverdiscovered over 300 uses for peanuts and 118 uses for sweet potatoes while teaching at Tuskegee University.  Americans consume over 4 million pounds of peanuts a day.  In a year we eat enough peanut butter to cover the floor of the Grand Canyon. 

Alabama Boil is an old dish served in the backroads of the Heart of Dixie.  You get a bigggggg pot and you stand up unshucked corn around the edge.  Throw in 8-12 onions, 8-12 potatoes, a couple of pounds of green beans, red peppers, and several pounds of sausage … Italian, Polish, or whatever.  Then an inch of water goes into the bottom of the pot and it steams the whole lot for about 4-5 hours.

Alabama Peanuts

I have never had these served like this.  These were raw, in the shell, and boiled for hours in water and several tablespoons of salt.  Cool slightly, peel, and eat.  They then softly crunch like a cooked bean.

The corn in the Alabama boil swelled up into rich, yellow kernels.

We knew somewhere along our tour of the South we would have to make some catfish.  Catfish has not been served in the Spangler home in 25 years, so this was very different for us.  James grilled it. 

The finished meal.

Arkansas – celebrated with mountain green and creamy beige tablecloths to create a natural color scheme and a fruitful vine centerpiece.  Also celebrated with the honor of the presence of the two Mr. Blanchards.  I enjoyed feeding the younger Mr. Blanchard in the high chair.  (Almost completed dollhouses in the background.)

Now, if you are listening to the music you will either say to yourself “That’s Arkansas Traveler” or you will start singing, “I’m bringing home a baby bumblebee, won’t my mama be so proud of me?”  Either way, you can hum along and tap your feet.

State Motto: The Natural State

Capital:  Little Rock

State Bird:  Mockingbird (this intrigues me – why are so many states choosing a bird with an attitude?)

State Flower:  Apple Blossom

Diverse landscapes and outdoor activities earn Arkansas its nickname.  On its north and west rise the rugged Ouachita Mountains and the Ozark Plateau.  Between them flows the Arkansas River, south and east across the state to the Gulf Coastal Plain.  There it meets the Mississippi River, with its many oxbow lakes along the eastern border. 

French explorers scouted the natural resourses of this area in the 1670s.  The French learned of a native group named for the south wind.  Oo-ka-na-sa was penned by the French into “Arkansas.”  (ARK-an-saw)  Arkansas was part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.  Arkansas joined the Confederacy and was not readmitted into the Union until African Americans were given the right to vote in 1868.   Overall, Arkansas has been one of the more poor states, but it is rich in natural resources and beauty.  The soggy Mississippi River lowlands provide rice fields which are flooded to farm fish.  Catfish, cotton, chickens, and turkeys are abundant. Arkansas is the top US producer of bauxite and bromine.  Bauxite is where we get aluminum from, bromine is used in fire retardants.

Northern Arkansas is on my list of Top Ten Places to Live in the USA.   We have vacationed there twice – once in Jasper and once outside of Eureka Springs.  Our family enjoys the natural beauty of this area along with the culture of the Ozarks.  I’ve told James he can get a job there anytime. (Doing what?  Why, making Hillbilly music of course!  Oh yeh, I forgot.  We’re into classical music.)

We held Karen’s high school graduation in the magnificent glass Thorncrown Chapel in a forest in Eureka Springs and then had a wonderful lunch at War Eagle Mill.

Because Arkansa is so rich in natural resources and many good things to eat, it was a tough choice to come up with a menu.  I had thirty things to choose from.  If I had a deep fryer I would have done Ozark Fried Pies.  Instead, I started days ahead of “eating our way through” with making Arkansas Caviar.  You have to remember that the people of Arkansas are not financially rich.  So their Caviar is made from black eyed peas.  Now, we don’t eat black eyed peas here at our house.  No one has ever liked the taste of them.  I don’t like anything staring up at me from my dinner plate (pea eyes, fish eyes, any eyes).  Yet I was drawn to the Arkansas Caviar which fermented three days in the frig and was close to a sour Pennsylvania Dutch dressing.  It was delicious, particularly because it reminded me of Dutch Bean Salad.  Further research has revealed that Mississippi has a similar black eyed peas caviar that is more southwestern in flavorings.  Who needs fish eggs? 

Each October The Great American Spam Championship takes place at the Arkansas State Fair in Little Rock.  Although Spam was born in Hormel, Minnesota, the championships are here in the South.  We ate the first place winner from the 2006 competition:  Spam Bowl Dip.  The spam was ground with garlic and parmesan cheese, other flavorings were added.  The sauce over the top is cream cheese with red jalapeno jelly and we served the dip with buttery crackers. 

The main dish was Arkansas Chicken.  The pan was lined with corned beef.  The chicken, wrapped in bacon, was cooked in sour cream and cream cheese and a thick chicken sauce.  Since rice is grown in Arkansas we had that on the side but something a little different.  We have never had Minute Rice in our house so I bought a box.   My children were in awe that this rice was not brown.

Arkansas Chicken was such a hit that it is going into our permanent recipe file.  I think this is because of the corned beef.  It just adds a little zip to the chicken and bacon.

Baked in the sauce until brown.  No, I did not count the fat grams.  My calculator does not go that high.  I had extra sauce heated on the side and that disappeared quickly.

Last was Cliff House Company’s Comin’ Pie.  In 1986, Arkansas celebrated its statehood Sesquicentennial with the theme “Company’s Comin’.”   Cliff House, which overlooks the Grand Canyon of the Oarks in Jasper along the national Scenic 7 Byway (yes, we’ve been there), made the original pie for the occasion.  The meringue crust ready to go into a 30 minute bake.  (egg white, cream of tartar, a full cup of sugar, 18 crushed saltines, pecans, and vanilla)

Pie #1:  The whip cream topping – with strawberries folded in.

Pie #2:  The whip cream topping with crushed pineapple folded in.  There were leftovers of these pies in the frig but never saw them shortly after that.  Funny thing.  The pie pans have been washed and put away.  Glad I got a slice when I did.

We are off to a good start eating our way through The Grand Ol’ South.

My husband, whose ancestors were wealthy plantation owners in Virginia, has informed me that the South starts at Virginia.  The records from his great-great-great-grandparents were destroyed when the Richmond courthouse was destroyed in the Civil War but were carried on in oral tradition.   So the status of Maryland has been moved to Mid-Atlantic State.  Not that it matters too much.  We can still be “crabby” when we eat through it.   Yum.  Blue crab.

Just think, perhaps if the Civil War had not happened, I would be married to a wealthy Virginian who owns a large steel producing company and a very large plantation outside Norfolk.   But thanks to General Sherman’s march that burned the sixty mile wide path straight to Atlanta, the family tree ended up penniless.  I think that is called “Gone With the Wind.”  No hoop skirts for me.

Yes, next on the itinerary is to eat our way through the South.  The Grand Ol’ South.   From the sources I checked, there would be some debate here about whether or not Delaware and Maryland are southern.  Some of my books list them as being part of the Northeast, but my flashcards and cookbooks put them in the South along with a few historical resources.  Since I am from the Northeast, my experience tells me that Maryland is southern, but Delaware is not.  In Pennsylvania we were a little more forgiving if you were from these border states than if you were farther down in twang country.  I’ll never forget my 10th grade geometry teacher who was from Alabama and the only southern I had met in my childhood.  My classmates and I understood little that she said… but she sure was sugar sweet.  I never could tell, however, the difference between pan-pen-pin when she said them.  I really had to follow the context of what she was saying.   I was convinced that as a child they taught her to talk with marbles in her mouth.  I found out later while visiting England for a month that they thought the same thing of me.

The Mason-Dixon line has traditionally been used to separate the culture of the North and the South.  It places Maryland in the South and Delaware in the North.  Originally the line was surveyed because of multiple boundary disputes between the Penn and Calvert families representing Pennsylvania and Maryland.  The Missouri Compromise of 1820 created the political conditions which made the Mason-Dixon Line important to the history of slavery.  It was during this time that Congress first used the boundary to designate between free states and slave states. 

This complicates things because although Delaware was a slave state, it never considered secession.  Marshal law prevented Maryland from seceding.  There were divided loyalties in both states. 

The seven states declared their secession before Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861 were South Carolina, Mississippi, florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiaina, and Texas.  After the attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 186, and Lincoln’s subsequent call for troops on April 15, four more states declared their secession:  Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina.

The border states of Kentucky and Missouri declared neutrality very early in the war.   Later on Kentucky split in its loyalty.  Missouri passed an ordinance of secession but it was confused when Federal troops took over the capital.  The Confederate flags had thirteen stars, reflecting claims of Kentucky and Missouri.  West Virginia was still forming and was in the Confederacy.  Both the North and the South used marshal law to keep counties from swaying to the opposite side.

From my point of view, Maryland belonged to Them and Delaware belonged to Us, and I derive this from cultural attitudes in my childhood.   And now that I have been in Texas for 26 years, I am totally confused because my Texan born children think we lost the Civil War, but I grew up thinking we won it.  Throughout our 22 years of home school historical study, I have come to conclude that no one won.  It is judgment on a nation when brothers fight against brothers.  The results are never good. 

So where do Maryland and Delaware land?  I think I am in a State of Confusion.  Since Delaware was greatly influenced by Quaker missionaries and originally part of the Philadelphia area, I will slide it into the Mid-Atlantic States category.  Maryland I will consider South because it is south of the Mason-Dixon line.  Missouri is considered part of the Midwest and we’ll eat through it sometime next year.

The bottom line: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North and South Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee, West and Regular Ol’ Virginia, and Maryland.  So off we go into Dixie, yes derived from the ”Dixon” in Mason-Dixon line.  I mention here that my children are familiar with Cowboy music of the Southwest, but now we’ll have to add some dinner music of a different flavor.  I wonder if I will survive the music and food.  We’ll see.

I wish I was in de land ob cotton,

Old times dar am not forgotten;

Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.

In Dixie Land whar I was born in,

Early on one frosty mornin,

Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.

Old Missus marry “Will-de-weaber,”

Willium was a gay deceaber;

Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.

But when he put his arm around’er,

He smiled as fierce as a forty-pound’er,

Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.

Dar’s buck-wheat cakes an ‘Ingen’ batter,

Makes you fat or a little fatter;

Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.

Den hoe it down an scratch your grabble,

To Dixie land I’m bound to trabble.

Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.

Arizona

Capital:  Phoenix (yes, we all learned to spell it)

State Bird:  Cactus Wren

State Flower:  Saguaro

State Motto:  The Grand Canyon State

Native Americans and the US Government own 70 percent of the state.  That means only 30 percent is privately owned.  Doesn’t seem like much.  Arizona’s largest lizard, the Gila monster, is the only poisonous lizard in the US.  London Bridge is in Lake Havasu City.  There are 21 Indian reservations in Arizona, the largest belongs to the Navajos.  There is also a huge graveyard of governmental aircraft out in the desert. 

The economic infrastructure of Arizona is rather fragile.  For years Arizona depended upon five C’s.

Copper, cattle, cotton, citrus, and climate.

Arizona still produces more copper than all other states combined, but its importance has declined.  The three agricultural C’s are still farmed, but Arizona is out of water.  Lack of water is the largest threat to all of Arizona.  Efforts to bring Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson puts Arizona at odds with California and Nevada.

Our family has traveled to Arizona two times to visit relatives in Tucson and a third time for James to officiate over his grandmother’s memorial service.  James’ folks bestowed on us such gracious hospitality whenever we were in Arizona.  Twice we have driven straight up the state through several climate zones to the Grand Canyon.  It is an outstanding drive to take if you are ever there, except for the lanes that go off into nowhere in case you lose your car brakes.  We pulled our RV up there a few years ago and I was glad when we finally arrived at the Canyon, although it was a freezing 17 degrees.  We’ve been through Sedona and also the Painted Desert.  The Sonoran Desert is so beautiful.  And we’ve been to one of the observatories that keeps an eye on the skies.  Arizona is definitely a unique place.  Yet to us, our fondest memory is that Granny lived in Tucson – it is there where she lived such a godly life for her Saviour, and she is buried there.  She lived over 100 years on this earth if you count the days she lived in utero.

Years ago James’ mom made prickly pear cactus jelly for us and it was pretty good.  I looked in many grocery specialty stores in about a 25 mile radius and found none.  I wanted to have some with our Arizona meal. 

And, speaking of food, one of my favorite memories of Arizona is when my father-in-law took us up to the top of Mount Lemmon in the Santa Catalina Mountains.  Mount Lemmon is 9,000 feet high with incredible views for those who like heights.  (Not me.  Why are scenic drives equal to feeling like you are going to lose your lunch with that whoozy feeling.)  I noticed that in Arizona they called these views vistas.  At the top of the mountain we took a rest stop.  Grandpa was holding Baby Emily (whom he called Butterball) and when I was in the restroom he took it upon himself to feed Em a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.  I was reserved with sugar-chocolate-treats with all of my babies, but I thoroughly enjoyed and approved of Grandpa spoiling her.  Her little face with chocolate smeared on it is still clear in my memory as Grandpa cuddled her.  Reese’s is part of Hershey’s Chocolate so I gave double approval.  If it had been Nestles I might have felt differently.

Somehow Grandpa also had peanut butter cups in the frig every time we were in Arizona so when on occasion we have some, we chill or freeze them ahead of time.  There’s no other way to eat them.

Once again, James found his way to the kitchen.  He made chicken quesadillas, which was new to us but delicious.  James has not cooked much in the last three or four years and we have been overly delighted that he has been pushing us out of the kitchen for the United States dinners.  He has often told me that he would have loved to have been a chef.   His mother is also a terrific cook.

Blue corn chips with a bean dip that had all kinds of veggies in it and tomatillos.

Ready to eat.

Kimberly is so proud of her toothless grin because she can push her tongue straight through the hole.  There is no sign of a new tooth so she may have this privilege for quite a while.  The tooth fairy cried when the tooth came out.  Last top tooth on a child for the fairy mother to witness.  Kimmy is growing up too fast.  The other top tooth is loose and the tooth fairy has told her not to wiggle it at all!   

The quesadillas with zippy beans and rice.

Lemon bars.  Why lemon bars?  Because Catholic missionaries took lemons that were in China and introduced them to the US by planting them in Arizona.  Before then there were no lemons in the US.

Well, I can honestly say that this geography curriculum has been mighty tasty (spare the chicken fried steak).

I can not close this post without telling my Grand Canyon story.  Our first trip to the Grand Canyon was when Karen was 8 and Kathy was 6.  We arrived at night, James settled us in the lodge and then he (the naturalist) went out walking.  I assumed the canyon was fenced and lighted.  Wrong.  Wouldn’t you think that a big ol’ hole like that would have railings along the hotels thta are very close to the edge?  It was night and he came within inches of falling into it, down quite a steep cliff. 

The next morning we left for what was supposed to be the best site for capturing the first rays of sun, a photographer’s dream.  So off we went and a small group of people were there with the same goal in mind.  I stayed a small distance from the canyon’s edge, holding firmly to my daughters’ hands so they would not run over the edge.  As the first rays of sun peeked through the darkness my eyes searched for James and he was hanging out, and I mean hanging, on a small ledge that was a sliver of a tabletop over the chasm.  A lady, about 60 years old, came up to me and said, “Honey, is that your husband out there?  Well, my husband is out there on another ledge too.  Your blood pressure looks like it is off the charts.  Honey, let me give you some advice.  Thirty years ago my husband hung over Hoover Dam for a picture.  I gave him to God that very day.  Give your husband to God.  If they are going to hang like this, it’s only God that’s gonna keep them.”

That lady must have been a prophet.

The best news story on the Grand Canyon can be found here, complements of my Abigail, who was 10 feet away from the edge with no railing for the video shoot.  http://www.visionforum.com/hottopics/multimedia/enn/2006/12/1972.aspx

I’d also like to make note at this time, out of immense motherly embarassment pride, that Emily “spit a mile” straight down into the Canyon, which she could not wait to do.  And she did it more than once.  I’d also like to mention that this was a deal between her father and her and I had nothing to do with it.

We have one southwestern state left to eat our way through.  I have received several comments from some natives about our Texas and Oklahoma meals.  These comments have been rather enjoyable so keep them coming, along with all the cooking advice.  I will say this, though.  Pennsylvania is coming.  Not in the near future, but in the future.  That’s when we will finally have some real food around this place. 

Oklahoma … spelling of the vowels o-a-o-a which is the opposite of avocado.

Motto:  The Sooner State (they wanted to get there sooner)

Capital City:  Oklahoma City

Population:  3. 5 million people

State Bird:  Scissor-tailed Flycather

State Flower:  Mistletoe (now I’d like to know more about that)

Tulsa is known as the Oil Capital of the Word.  Oklahoma has more artificial lakes than any other state.  Thirty nine Native American Indian tribes have their headquarters in the state.  Also known as Tornado Alley, Oklahoma has 75% of all the tornadoes in the country.  People from Oklahoma are called Okies so I want to know if they say “Okey Dokey” a lot.

The world’s largest McDonald’s, on I44, is built over the highway with entrances on both sides.  We’ve been there.  And the state looks like a pan with a long handle.  It was called Indian Territory before becoming a state.

The official state meal of Oklahoma includes fried okra, squash, cornbread, barbecue pork, sausage and gravy, grits, corn, strawberries, chicken-fried steak, and black-eyed peas.  This says to me that someone either could not make up their mind, or that everyone’s nomination counted.  In deciding our menu I eliminated the lowly fried okra (crispy slime), and the black eyed peas.  (Who wants something staring up at you from your plate?  And no, I don’t like fish heads on a plate either.)  Grits were crossed off the list to be reserved for a future southern state and no one here likes squash spare me.

The day arrived.  Some In-juns showed up for the occasion.

Chicken fried steak, never prepared before in our home.

Chicken Fried Steak, Mashed Potatoes, Gravy, and Corn.  Strawberries for desert.

Later that evening, James and I agreed that it was the second worst meal we ever ate in our marriage in our home (27 years).  Only a meal that was prepared 24 years ago trumps it.  No more C F steak in the Spangler household.  As to the In-juns, they can stay.

Each week we are studying one state in the United States, and to enhance that study and integrate it with family life, we have purposed to eat our way through the USA.  And it seemed the right choice to start with our home state, Texas. 

State Motto:  The Lone Star State

Capital:  Austin

Population:  22 million

Industry:  chemicals, machinery, electronics, computers, food products, petroleum and natural gas, transporation equipment 

Agriculture:  cattle, sheep, poultry, cotton, sorghum, wheat, rice, hay, peanuts, pecans

State Bird:  Mockingbird

State Flower:  Bluebonnet (and oh aren’t they gorgeous in April)

Texas is larger in land mass than the combined area of all seven countries in Central America.  It is also larger than every country in combined Europe except Russia.  Only Alaska has more land than Texas as far as states go.  Six national flags have flown over Texas.  Texas has more counties than any other state.  I never saw an armadillo until I moved to Texas and it is the state animal.  (Why would we want armadillo for our state representation I’ll never know.)  Well, there’s lots more since Texas is so big, but let’s move on to the food.  The official state dish is chili but chili in Texas is different than the chili in Pennsylvania where I grew up.  So I looked up the Texas chili contest winners and found out that there are no beans in Texas chili and the meat is more often a chopped up roast than ground beef.  And it is hot in seasonings.  My husband loves to cook so he volunteered his services.  I kinda got a kick out of him.  Making Texas chili.  Wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap.

As a starting point I found this cookbook.  I’m also using several internet resources for food choices for each state.

Helpers.

The chili.  It was delicious.  James halved the chili powder from the recipe and we thought it was nearly perfect in heat degrees.  I am used to having chili over rice, so we did make some.  This recipe won a contest in 2006.

The pie shell.  Yes, I need to clean the oven.  We had a cake explode in it recently.  And I mean explode.

The table.

Pecan pie.  We thought it was a little sweet but very much enjoyed it.  Just a mix of sugars, butter, and pecans.  This was the 1996 State Fair pie contest winning recipe.

I did not make Texas sweet tea since my family does not care for ice tea, but I’ve had quite a few glasses here of late provided by one of my Texan friends.  Texas tea is pure sugar mixed with water and a little brown food coloring.  Well, not really, there actually is some tea in there and it sure is good!

The spirit of true Texans is one of fierce independence, as represented in the Alamo.   I have also found that Texans are hard to budge when they are convinced of anything, regardless of how they came to their conclusions.  A true Texan loves land and leather boots and has a pretty optimistic outlook.  Texas has reserved the right to succeed from the US and it also reserves the right to divide itself into five states.  Now, contemplating that, I find that very interesting.  I have thought of several ways of dividing into five states, some funny and some not so funny.

So, the future of Texas could be real interesting for sure, pard’ner!  Now where are my boots and my pony?

Things are humming along at our house.   The past week has been full of loving on Kimberly, as she broke her collarbone.  Here she is under a big blue ice pack.  I saw her fall and you know how it is for mothers.  I am convinced it happened in slow motion.  The kind where the brain says “Oh no” a million times before the event is complete.  If I had not seen it, it would have happened in real time. 

She was absolutely precious after the fall.  “I’m OK.  I’m OK, Mom.  I’m OK.”  All said while she was crying her eyes out.  I think she was trying to convince both of us that she was OK.  Perhaps a warning should come from recliner manufacturers that says on the tag:  Warning: A fully reclined recliner that is rapidly closed while your child is gingerly balanced on the foot rest may potentially catapult your child several feet up into the air, enabling a catastrophic fall with the clavicle reaching the floor first.   Or maybe it could simply say, This chair has thrust.  Somewhere in the recesses of my brain I recall ejector chairs either in science fiction or on space craft or somewhere.  I just did not know that we bought one for our living room. 

She now knows how to say clavicle and looks rather cute in her navy blue sling.  Popsicles are the comfort food of choice.  Broken collarbones are the most common breaks in children, so to think we have lived through 23 years of parenting and waited until our little caboose was five must mean that we have missed out on at least one of the common experiences of child raising.  Until now.

Also in the mix are three birthdays in a ten day span.  One down, two to go, and then fireworks for the Fourth of July.  We also have a day trip to an alpaca farm scheduled for these girls who are into fiber and spinning.

The temperature outside indicates that it is truly summer here on the prairie.  From J.R. Miller:  “Our days are like beautiful summer fields as God gives them to us.  The minutes are blooming flowers and silvery grassblades and stalks of wheat with their germs of golden grains.  The hours are trees with their rich foliage of vines with their blossom-prophecies of purple clusters.  Oh the fair, blessed possibilities of the days and hours and minutes as they come to us from God’s hands!  But what did you do with yesterday?  How does the little acre of that one day look to you now?  What are we doing with our time?  Every moment God gives us has in it a possibility of beauty as well as something to be accounted for.  Are we using our time for God?”

Karen still has her head in the clouds.  She really enjoys her camera. 

Hard to believe Kathy is now 21.  The Wooley Ewe, a yarn and knitting store, had nice circular knitting needles that Kathy had chosen for her birthday and she is well on her way to knitting a scarf out of some alpaca she had spun.   It was a joy to see the friendship between Kathy and Karen as they went off shopping for the afternoon, making sure to stop in at The Cheesecake Factory.   I heard that the white chocolate raspberry truffle cheesecake is too good to be true, but that the one with caramel, Butterfingers, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in it is even sweeter.  The raspberry lemonade glasses sported glass-tops frozen in sugar.  Must have been a tough afternoon for the girls to live through.  (Why doesn’t anyone ever choose the tiramisu?)

The younger girls put together a treasure hunt for Kathy’s gifts while she was out shopping and cheese caking.  They had wrapped four collector’s Winnie-the-Pooh animals in the miniature size (ebayed weeks before), and of course the hunt was in the woods a few miles from our house.  Here, in the One Hundred Acre Wood, as we affectionately have called it for 17 years, is Kathy and Kimberly finding the last little box which had a bear with fluff in it.  Kimberly was not deterred even in her sling.  Kathy, a Pooh collector, now only has the LARGE Pooh to secure for her collection. 

 James finished teaching Philemon to us and I learned many new things.  We are near the end of a short study in Phillippians and also working on the big (and I mean big!) Bible study question test.  The questions are getting harder.    We also did a time line of the Apostle Paul’s life and have a general map in our heads of where and what.  These are quiet, calm, and cool studies for the evening when James stretches out about half-way in the clavicle breaking chair recliner.  He is very much feeling the lasting life-time effects of the medication he was on last summer and the recliner is the most comfy place to be.  We are thankful that his brain is engaged even when he is tired.

In the past few days I have realized more and more how much I love him.  If only I could lighten his load.  If only I could eliminate the things that stand in the way of his heart’s desires and his vision.  If only I could reverse road blocks and generate resources.  If only.

One thing I am thankful for and that is his job is going rather well, particularly in a down economy and with many stresses in the business world.  His staff has been doing a great job and yesterday he was included on the Millenium Project Committee list.  Now I am sure there is some spiffy name for the committee but I’d never remember it.  Probably something like Innovative Millenium User Engagement Metrics.  If you browse through the 2009 corporate buzzword list at the end of this post, you can use them singularly or put any of them together and sound like you are really with it. 

Every once in a while I get a re-charge on the food menu and that hit me like a ton of bricks last week.  One of those I gotta, I gotta, I gotta do this kind of thing.  I ran across a new-to-me cookbook on discount last week and within its pages I found “My Mom’s Best Meal” and “Editor’s Meals” and “Meals on a Budget.”  It was an easy overview and with just an hour on the computer to come up with a master list … wha-lah! out from my printer came a six month menu.   We are also going to eat through the United States this next year.  More on that later.  Gotta pick a state first.  Got 50 choices. 

The math books arrived.  My middlers walked off with them before I even cracked them open.  What?   A Spangler picking up a math book?  We must be in for trouble.   James came up with a math sheet for them to do the work on that I wish I would have had years ago.

Emily is back on eye-patching for hours each day.  She is discouraged.  She has the ability to see one-eyed and it must be two, not one.  When she is two-eyed, she sees double.  Her 12 years have been filled with much confusion from visual disability.  I am praying for her every day as the patch goes on.  The new blue contact masks the coloboma well.  Her new glasses are a pretty shade of pink or rose or lavendar.  Not sure which.  She loves them and the shop was able to lessen the thick lens somehow.  A much better look.  There are signs that she will have to use a vision therapist, something new to us.

At the same time, if you ask Em what she is doing this summer, she will reply “Growing my hair.”  We stopped off for a quick haircut last week and I did not communicate correctly with the Asian haircutter who was English deficient.  English deficient means three inches too short.    Em has a good attitude towards this error.  Says it is cool for the summer and that she has reverted back to her pre-school Pixie days. 

Both dollhouses are almost complete on the exterior.  It’s nice to have the roofs and trims on.  If hoof becomes hooves, then why doesn’t roof become rooves?  Well, I guess that would not work because then goof would be gooves and that would be ridiculous.

My prescription continues to be rest and prayer.  From it has sprung up wells of gratitude for things I had not seen before.  Thank you, my precious Lord. 

Here’s the fun list of the 2009 corporate lingo.  It makes me crack up when I read this stuff.  At the same time it is a sad commentary.   From www.marketing-jive.com.

1. Value Justification – this was a hot buzzword/phrase in late 2008. We expect that this “buzzword” will continue to be on the lips of many marketers and business owners in 2009.
2. User Engagement – engagement was #9 on our list a year ago but has jumped up into the number two position this year as companies will be working that much harder to get users to engage with their content on their websites.
3. Business Objectives – in 2009, you can expect to hear a lot about defining business objectives as organizations proceed with lean initiatives.
4. Lean – you’ve probably already heard that 2009 is going to be a lean year from the economy to budget spend. After a tough 2008, many organizations will be looking towards lean initiatives to ensure that their organizations remain competitive and profitable.
5. Benchmarking – rounding out the top 5 is benchmarking as companies will be focusing on their direct competition to try and measure their own success.With that here is how the rest of the top 100 play out:
6. Personalization
7. Incremental Improvement
8. Success Metrics
9. User Intent
10. iPhone App
11. ROI
12. Blended Search
13. Value Add
14. Lead-Gen
15. Brand Identity
16. Twittering
17. Bail-out
18. Visibility
19. Digital Marketing
20. Strategy – one of the most mis-used buzzwords out there.
21. Conversion Analysis
22. Online Budget
23. Value Stream
24. Social Networking
25. Actionable
26. Usability
27. Viral Marketing
28. Consumer Appeal
29. Merger
30. Off-line vs. Online
31. Low-hanging fruit
32. Share of Voice
33. Content Optimization
34. Integration
35. Re-skilling
36. Quality Score
37. Long-tail
38. Wiki
39. Head (keyword)
40. Online Marketing
41. Blogging
42. Best Practices
43. Cutbacks
44. Benchmark
45. Torso (keyword)
46. SEO 2.0
47. Business-to-Everybody a.k.a B2E
48. Site Architecture
49. Buying Funnel
50. Mobile
51. Brandstorming
52. Below Zeros
53. Webmaster Tools
54. Loyalty
55. Demand Creation
56. Web Analytics
57. Simplification
58. Restructuring
59. Corporate DNA
60. Dollarization
61. Downtrending
62. Video Optimization
63. Web Conferencing
64. Semantic Mapping
65. Bounce Rate
66. Alignment
67. Keyword Research
68. Lifelong Value
69. Online Evangelism
70. Recession Proofing
71. Mobi
72. Consumer Retention
73. Organic Search
74. Segmentation
75. Online Video Ads
76. SEM
77. The Obama Effect
78. Deferred Success
79. Win-Win
80. Calls to Action
81. Website Re-design
82. Emotional Economy
83. Greenlining – the process of going green in the office as a method of improving the working environment
84. Mobilization
85. Facetime
86. Waste Identification
87. Measuring Value
88. Trended Analysis
89. Enterprise Marketing
90. Voice of the Customer
91. Empowerment
92. Holographic Conference
93. Google Recession
94. Employee Surfboarding
95. Work in Progress
96. Re-engineering
97. Budget Checking
98. Redeploying Assets
99. Return on Invested Capital (ROIC)
100. Embedding

Congratulations to my son, Matthew, on winning second place in the Heard Natural Science Museum 2009 Photography Contest in the Junior Division.  Last fall he shot this photo at Lake Texoma.  I liked the dark frame he achieved with the trees, the blue lake, and the fall colors.  I guess some judges liked it too.   Matthew has not seen his photo on display but hopefully tomorrow he will be well enough to take a trip to see it.  He has been recovering from a 20 foot fall that occurred earlier this week.  He was up in our tall oak tree developing a pulley system to transport items from a smaller tree up to the treehouse and when he leaned over to grab a cord, he slipped off the branch he was standing on.   He just about blacked out, saw a lot of stars, and then could not move for a while.  He injured his ribs and his collarbone and has a pretty good backache.  I’m glad I did not see my son fall, but I have seen the indentation it made on the ground.  On the other hand, maybe a photo of the fall would have won a photo contest, if the camera would have survived me dropping it. 

Karen entered this photo that she entitled First Pickin’ and as you can see, it was the first blackberry on our bushes last spring.  I do not have it cropped as nicely as she had it when she had it printed for the contest.  I love berries and berry patches.

Well, it was just buggin’ me that I had a list of errands and deliveries to make and I was going to miss all the action.   In my absence, I asked my resident photographer to log the fondant cake that Kathy started about 9:00 this morning.  Well, by started I mean that she already had the cake made, the icing made, and supplies purchased.  This cake was a three unit cake which made a sheet cake and three baby circular cakes.  Today was reserved for decorating.  

Here she is covering a miniature cake that will become the big yellow “bump” on the top of the cake.

Fondant is basically edible play dough, although most people discard it because of texture and taste.  It really is more of a decorating fancy.  It puts the cost of a cake up considerably too.  Fondant and marzipan are used mostly in the United Kingdom.  It has caught on in the United States over the past few years.  Buttercream has been popular for decades in the U.S. but unheard of in the U.K.  Kathy has received instruction from a British cake maker that detailed other differences. 

More fondant.  This is royal blue.  She also used regal purple, egg yellow, teal, super red, and leaf green.

This is the baby circular cake pan that is used for the bump, the fondant circles, and the additional two layer baby cake you will soon see.  All these circles made the project proportional and well matched.  We have learned over the years that proportion is everything …. especially when making wedding cakes.  There’s kind of a knack to it and sometimes we get it right, and sometimes we don’t get it right.

Kneading purple fondant.  It takes a long time to get the color through even a small lump.

And the teal.

These are bowls of buttercream icing matched to the fondant colors.  These will trim the cake which has been frosted in white buttercream.  In the right lower corner you can see the two layer baby cake which has not yet been frosted with the yellow and two fondant circles.

By now you may guess who this is.

The yellow bump with a fondant smile and antennae.

All done!  This was an all day project.

It was a humid and warm day so a fan cooled and dried the cake before it melted away.  The two layer baby cake also has a fondant smile on yellow buttercream.

You are right! It is Baby Einstein….

and baby cake Einstein!

What a buggy day!