heart of scone

We’ve been going through another hectic stretch, mostly due to John working crazy hours again. My own hours have been pretty well filled by taking care of kiddos and work, plus not quite enough sleep. On Sunday, though, I got to sleep in a couple of extra hours. John was still up working when Phoebe and Theo woke up, so he wrangled them and got them a bite to eat while I slept until after 9. It was a wonderful Valentine’s Day present–even better than chocolate.¹ (Now if only I hadn’t been up till 3 trying to get a little quality time with my laptop…)

We haven’t really done much for Valentine’s Day in the past, as I am a cynical cold-hearted type who scorns all forms of romance and sentimentality, with an aversion to heart-shaped things and the color pink. However, having the wee ones around, with their spirits as yet untarnished by such cynicism has changed me a bit. In spite of its brittle candy exterior, my chocolaty heart has melted somewhat towards the heart-shaped rosy-colored trappings of Valentine’s Day. A festive heart-oriented activity was in order.

In keeping with my enthusiasm for baked goods, I thought making pink heart-shaped scones would fit the bill. We used the blueberry scone recipe, but used frozen raspberries instead of blueberries to get the scones festively pink. (They ended up more purple and red than pink, and we all agreed that we like the blueberry ones better, but they were still tasty enough for us to gobble them down in short order.)


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¹Though John did also get me some chocolate.

The January Just Posts

Welcome to the latest edition of the Just Posts, a monthly roundtable of posts on topics of social justice hosted here and at Holly’s.

January was tough month. The earthquake in Port-au-Prince was a tragedy of such mind-numbing proportions, and the healing and recovery for Haiti has barely begun. Many of the writers this month’s roundtable have reflected on these events.

January also saw the celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States, an occasion which inspired some happier reflections on progress our society has made.

Slow as it seems, it helps to remember that progress has been made. In my quest for new voices to bring into the Just Posts community, I came across a short post from early February that really stuck with me:

On February 1, 1960, for the first time, black students went to a drugstore, made some purchases, sat down at the lunch counter, and wouldn’t get up. It was the first sit-in.

In six months, that drugstore counter in Greensboro, NC, was desegregated.

(An excerpt from Fifty Years Ago Today By Morganna of UUCIF Social Justice)

Something to think about.

And now, the The January Just Posts:

This month’s posts were nominated by:

If you have a post in the list above, or would just like to support the Just Posts, we invite you to display a button on your blog with a link back here, or to the Just Posts at Cold Spaghetti. If you would like to have a post included next month, you can find out how to submit posts and all sorts of other stuff about the Just Posts at the information page.

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We should have more updates soon on our big project to highlight the fantastic Just Posts of 2009. We have gotten 2 independent reviews on all 300 posts, and are working on finalizing our lists of finalists. (Hmmm…our final lists of finalists…) Thanks so much to all of you who have participated in this project! We couldn’t do it without you.

The Lawn in Winter

Did you notice how my photos from that last post had no children in them? I just figured I would post some photos that weren’t of a) my children or b) food or c) my children eating food.

But I can’t hold out long. Here are a bunch of photos of Phoebe and Theo playing in our yard this winter.

This was Monday.

You’ll notice that not all of the lawn has snow.

These were from a few weeks ago.

Back in December, we got a goodly amount of snow, and our lawn looked more like this:

Phoebe, our little penguin, loved playing in the deep snow.

Theo, not so much.

It’s snowing right now, and we’re supposed to get around a foot of accumulation. So far it’s just a dusting.

blueberry scones


blueberry oatmeal scones
1 cup oatmeal, blended into a coarse flour
2 cups white flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 stick salted butter (chilled)
about 3/4 cup milk (or soy milk)
about 3/4 cup blueberries (fresh, frozen or dried. If you use frozen, don’t thaw them first)
optional: 1 TBS coarse sugar

preheat oven to 375 degrees
grease 2 cookie sheets
• In a large mixing bowl, combine dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. (Be very careful to break up any lumps of baking soda. I hate biting into a bit of baking soda in a scone. The first scone I ever remember eating bit me back with a lump of baking soda. It’s a wonder I ever tried scones again. But I did, and we are friends again.)
• Cut the stick of butter into smallish marble-sized chunks, then add to bowl of dry ingredients. Cut the butter into the flour mixture using a pastry cutter (also called a pastry blender) if you have one. (If you don’t have one, it sounds like you can use 2 butter knives.)
• When thoroughly blended, and the mixture appears to be a crumbly, grainy powder, add the milk a little at a time. Add just enough to achieve a very stiff, sticky dough. (I had to add a bit more than 3/4 cup.)
• Add the blueberries, and stir in. (I used frozen blueberries.)
• Drop lumps of the dough onto the cookie sheet in whatever size you think looks scone-like. I tried one pan of roughly 1/2 cup-sized scones, and another pan with maybe 1/4 sized scones. They will expand and spread a little bit, so give them a good inch or so between lumps.
• If you want, sprinkle a bit of coarse sugar on the tops.
• Bake at 375. The big scones took about 20 minutes, the smaller ones more like 10. The scones are done when you can see bits of lightly browned edges.

(This recipe is based roughly on recipes found here and here.)

I made scones with Phoebe this morning. It was the first time I’d made scones from scratch, but I was quite pleased with how they turned out. I was also quite pleased to be able to use my vintage pastry cutter for the first time. I’m pretty sure it’s from my grandmother’s house.

The scones were really yummy by the way. I use the past tense because they are long gone. I can’t tell you how well they preserve because they didn’t stand a chance in our household.

Borrowed Pants: Selected Texts from the Pants Archives

From my place in the seat of the Pants Institute, I am on occasion privileged to receive interesting pockets of Pants Knowledge from fellow Pants Scholars from the wider Pants World.

PoetTraveler of Reaching for my pen… recently left the following gem of Pants Lore in the comments of my about page, an article which surely deserves your clothes attention.¹

The quest for perfect Pants is a longstanding one. Many have searched for the ideal symbol of this emblematic icon. There has been much coverage on the subject. Some academics argue that perfection is impossible. Others say not so, it’s all down to genes.

Indeed, the great pants-philosopher, Levy of Denim, produced a schematic that took Plato’s theory of Forms further . For Levy, Pants was all about form. His addendum to Plato’s idea was not a re-butt-al, figuratively speaking. He postulated that Form clings to genes and to this day one of most widely used expressions in the field contains both a noun and an adjective incorporated in the effusive expression “I’m panting for more”.

– Excerpt from “Pantalonia – The Path of Bottomless Knowledge” –

After a brief discussion of the Text, he also shared the following:

Some dissidents – notably Diogenes of Sinope were critical of Levy of Denim’s association with Plato’s ideas. He accused Levy of being inelastic in his coverage, of dressing part of the Form concept in such a way so that it became an inelastic pro-position. Levy of Denim was noted for labeling his ideas carefully and when Diogene’s criticisms reached him he was said to have sighed and murmured “That Diogenes is not exactly a barrel of laughs” The ancient greek translation is inaccurate because of ambiguity in this context and another meaning could be “He’s not getting me over a barrel”, but there is no collective agreement on this possible alternative meaning and in any case Denim of Levy was, at that time, apparently happily married to Levytica, a seamstressed lady from Syracuse.

I expect you will agree that briefs of this fashion are a tight fit for the body of Pants Knowledge assembled in the Pants Institute, and should be stored in the venerable drawers of the Pants Bureau Archives.

This message was approved by the Ministry of Pants.

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¹This pun was also borrowed from PoetTraveler.²
²Even more Pants material can be sewn, or um, seen here, as well as more of our off the cuff³ exchange.
³…or on the fly, as it were.

head in a fog

I’ve come down with a bad cold, and my head is in a total fog. It’s really remarkable how hard I find it just to put words together. (I tried to write something funny, but apparently my sense of humor has been impaired by the virus, along with my sinuses. Or maybe my sense of humor resides in my sinuses, and is now inflamed.)

I also find myself really annoyed that this is the 4th time I’ve been sick in as many weeks. I’m not sure what my point is, beyond, um, blech.

I guess I should be relieved that this cold waited to strike till after I was done co-teaching my class last week. (It was a week-long intersession class on prosodic transcription.) As it was, I really enjoyed the class. And found myself quite relieved to not be pregnant while teaching it this time. (This is the third time we’ve put on this class. The first time, I was 8 months pregnant. The second time I was only a few weeks pregnant, and had morning sickness.)

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Meanwhile, Holly and I have been making great progress with our project to highlight some of the best Just Posts of 2009. We’re quite grateful to have gotten loads of help from readers, bloggers and other friends. Since evaluating posts is so subjective, in the interest of fairness, we are having each post evaluated independently by 2 different reviewers.  Holly and I will then be making the final cut based on the ratings and comments we’ve received, plus our own two cents. (Or possibly 4 cents, since there are two of us. Is someone keeping track of the pennies?)

We’re getting close to having our reviews together, but there’s still more to be done. (A few batches of posts to review have gone astray due to spam filtering or other irreconcilable email woes, and need to be reassigned.) So, if you have the time and inclination to join in (or join in some more!) and look at 5 or 10 posts over the next few days, let us know.