Archive | November 2006

Cornbread Salad

Nov3

Here’s a recipe for using up leftover cornbread. I like sweet cornbread,usually using a cornmuffin mix like Jiffy, but you may like yours without sugar.

1 (1 1/2 qt.) pan cooked corn bread
2 C. mayonnaise or salad dressing
2 celery stalks, chopped
1 large green pepper, chopped
1 jar chopped pimientos
3/4 C. chopped green onions
3/4 C. chopped pecans
2 large tomatoes, diced

Crumble cornbread into bowl. Add remaining ingredients and stir. Place in refrigerator to chill. (About 2 1/2 hours is best.) Yields 8 to 10 servings.

By the way, Melissa says pecans are a critical ingredient in chocolate cake.

Melissa’s Mom’s Rocky Road Sheet cake recipe

Remember: if you have posted something pecan-related on your blog, be sure and leave a link. I’ll enter you in my drawing at the end of the month, and the winner will get a pound of fresh shelled pecans and maybe an extra bonus gift.

Friday’s Center of the Blogosphere

Nov3

“Christian fiction writers, don’t apologize for illuminating beauty and goodness instead of ugliness and depravity. You can write honestly about the horrors of life without as BJ writes, ‘sickening [their] readers or beating them over the head with gratuitous brutality and viciousness and gore-galore. It’s called honest fiction.'” Cindy Swan quoting Christian author B.J.Hoff in a discussion of realistic fiction.

“As I’ve written here before, naughty little words in fiction are usually a sign of lazy, superficial writing. Serious authors know that nine times out of ten there is a deeper, more accurate and more compelling way to get the point across. Still, there is always that one time in ten, so in principle I have no problem with using any word for the right reasons. Church ladies notwithstanding, artistic excellence demands we choose the word that’s perfect for the work at hand. But it’s not art to use naughty little words as a strategy to appeal to a certain kind of reader. It’s propaganda.” Athol Dickson, author of the excellent, propaganda-free, novel, River Rising, at the blog Charis Connection. Read the comments, too, as the discussion there is good.

All Saints Day is a big celebration in Poland.

The Beehive posts a perfect response to Jon Cary, Jone Carry, John Kerry.

“The truth is, I am Ted Haggard, we are all Ted Haggard, and Ted Haggard is all of us. And may God have mercy me, on Ted and on all of us.” JollyBlogger on the latest evangelical scandal.

Pecan Quiz

Nov3

Pecans




Pecans

Art Print

Smith, Cedric


Buy at AllPosters.com

Leave a link to your pecan post in the Mr. Linky, and you’ll be entered in my November is the Month of the Pecan contest. One of you will win a pound of fresh shelled pecans and maybe a bonus book or something pecan-related.

In the meantime, here’s a pecan quiz for all pecan lovers. NOTE: some questions have no right answer.

1. Is it PEE-can or pa-CAHN?

2. Is a shelled pecan
a. a pecan with a shell
b. a pecan without a shell

3. The pecan is the only major nut tree that grows naturally in North America. True or false?

4. Why should you store shelled pecans in the freezer?

5. What two US presidents are known to have cultivated pecan trees in their gardens?

6. Are pecans widely grown in any country other than the United States? If so, where?

7. What is the average price for a pound of shelled pecans this year? How much does a pound of pecans cost in your local grocery store?

8. What is the meaning of the Cajun phrase “gone pecan”?

9. In 1919 the legislature of which state declared the pecan tree to be the state tree? What state produces the most pecans for sale?

10. Do you thresh the pecans from the trees or thrash them?

You can answer any or all of the quiz questions in the comments or on your own blog. I’ll be answering them in upcoming pecan posts this month. Remember: if you have posted something pecan-related on your blog, be sure and leave a link. I’ll enter you in my drawing at the end of the month, and the winner will get a pound of fresh shelled pecans and maybe an extra bonus gift.

LOST Rehash: The Cost of Living . . Is Dying?

Nov2

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.

LOST Spoilers ahead. If you have not seen tonight’s episode, and don’t want to know about it until you’ve done so, don’t read anymore.


I’m not sure Mr. Eko ever got it, and I’m not happy that the LOST writers left him in limbo or purgatory or unresolved or whatever. I like Mr. Eko. I agree that back in Africa he pretty much responded to events in the best way he knew how. And on the island, when he took out a couple of the Others, I don’t know what choice he had. And he didn’t finish Yemi’s church because he thought he had to push the button. I agree that decision was dumb, but not culpable. So, are we supposed to get out of all this that all sin is illusion and that everybody’s just doing the best they can. Even Kate who blew up her dad? Even Sawyer the con-man? Even Benny himself (who as far as I’m concerned is the Arch-Fiend)?

Or is the Black Smoke coming to get them all and make them pay for their very real sins? Was Yemi really Yemi, or was he the Black Smoke Devil impersonating Yemi? He said, “You talk to me as if I am your brother.” In that case, was the Yemi vision that Mr. Eko saw earlier that led him to the Pearl Hatch and the plane, a good Yemi vision or a demonic vision? That one sure created a lot of trouble, causing Locke to lose faith in the button-pushing and eventually causing the blow-up of the hatch.We are beginning to think that LOST island is the Island where dead people come back to life and lead people astray.

Sorry, Juliette. It may seem as if it would be the perfect way to get rid of your Benny problem, but Jack is not going to let someone die during surgery on purpose. You’re going to have to find another way —if I believe that you’re honest in the first place. I believe that Benny’s a liar and that you and he have some kind of tension between you. But I don’t know if you, Ms. Juliette, are any more honest, trustworthy, and upright than Benny.

Who’s the guy with the eye patch who made such a brief appearance on TV?

Wasn’t Mr. Eko cool when he got those guys who were planning to cut off his hand? Why, oh, why did the writers have to kill Mr. Eko?

What’s with the white robes for the funeral? It looked like a cult. Maybe the Others worship and appease the Black Smoke god so that he won’t do to them what he did to Eko. Oh, but Benny is good because he believes in God. What god does he think brought Jack to his rescue?

And why are the Others, especially Benny, engaging in all this deception and rigamarole? Benny has cancer. A surgeon falls out of the air. Why didn’t the Others introduce themselves, tell the survivors who they were and what they were doing on the island, and ask Jack to do surgery? Obviously, there’s something else going on, but what?

I’m not too happy with this week’s episode of LOST. Eko has “paid” for his sins, but he’s no more sinful, no more a “bad man” than many of the other LOST characters. If I were Bernard, I’d be really worried right now. People who crashed in the tail section of the plane don’t have a good prognosis for survival. Class prejudice.

Choose Your Own Adventure: The Abominable Snowman

Nov2

I remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books; they were quite popular back in the early eighties when I was a school librarian (in another life). With the books the premise or gimmick was that they were written in second when you got to certain pages in the book, you were presented with a choice. Choose A and go to page X; choose B and go to page Y. Some choices were disastrous and ended the story rather quickly. Other choices prolonged the adventure and led to more choices.

In this DVD the idea is much the same. At certain key points in the movie, the viewer is given a choice as to how the adventure will continue. Stay in the airplane or parachute out? Follow the footprints or go back to camp? Each choice made leads the movie adventurers in a different direction. The DVD case says you can choose from eleven possible stories.

The main characters are stereotypical, multi-cultural, adventurous kids who go to visit their uncle in Nepal.There’s a bold, curious girl named Christa, a nerdy, cautious brother named Benjamin, and their adopted-from-Guatemala kid brother, Marco. The parents are missing-in-action. The dialog is cartoonish; the animation is adequate; and the story, or stories, is fairly predictable. Also, be warned, the humor is clean but juvenile, several jokes about “colder than a penguin’s butt,” for example.

Nevertheless, my urchins were fascinated, going back over and over again to try out the different alternatives and choices. There’s information in the the course of the story about Nepal and the Himalayas, if you’re looking for educational value. And there’s an extra 28 minute documentary on the same DVD entitled How People Live in Nepal —which, of course, my adventurers had no interest in watching. I plan to make them watch it anyway in a couple of weeks when we get to India and Nepal in our around-the-world study.

Coming in 2007 & 2008:The Lost Jewels and The Mystery of The Maya. You can order the movie The Abominable Snowman, at amazon.com. Or go to the official website for the series to learn more about the DVD’s and to enter related contests.

April???

Nov1

It turns out that April is National Pecan Month. Pecans fall in the fall. They are fresh in the grocery stores in October or November just in time for holiday baking. Pecan pies and fruit salad with pecans and pecan fudge are all associated with the fall and winter months. So why April? Are they trying to build up sales in a slow month? Were October and November already taken by Rhubarb and Peanuts?

Nevertheless here at Semicolon, November is the Month of the Pecan. Pecans have yet to attain worldwide fame. So in November, not waiting until April, here on this blog, we will do our part to exalt and pooularize the lowly but tasty pecan. This November celebration is more proof, in case you needed it, that I am not a hireling of the pecan industry. I’m just a an ordinary pecan-lover who’s trying to celebrate her faovrite nut in the month in which I’ve become accustomed to thinking about pecans.

If you have a recipe or a quotation or a story or a joke or a picture or anything else pecan-related to share on your blog, leave a link in the Mr. Linky, and I’ll also mention you and link to your post again in one of my daily(?) Pecan Posts.

Even better, for everyone who leaves a link to something pecan-like, I’ll put your name in the hat and draw one at the end of the month. The lucky winner will receive a pound of fresh shelled pecans and maybe I’ll even throw in a book, if I find one that is pecan-y enough.

SO, write pecans.

Laura of Lines in Pleasant Places likes pecans, too. And now, thanks to her post, if I’m ever in Alabama, I know where to go for pecans and pecan treats. She also gives a variation on my recipe for sweet potato casserole.

Pecans, the Nut of the Gods

Nov1

Close View of Shelled Pecans in Warm Light




Close View of Shelled Pecans in Warm Light

Photographic Print

Green, Brian…


Buy at AllPosters.com

OK, I realize it has an odd sound to it, but I believe in pecans (not the gods). Pecans are the most excellent of nuts. Pecans are supremely edible. Pecans are a good addition to almost any dessert and many salads and entrees. Pecans are King.

So, I thought to myself (to whom else would I think), if Rebecca can declare October Potato Month, I can certainly say that November is the Month of the Pecan. I don’t expect to get as much participation as Rebecca did since potatoes are ordinary, but ubitquitous and popular all over the world. Pecans have yet to attain worldwide fame. Nevertheless, here on this blog, we will do our part to exalt and pooularize the lowly but tasty pecan. If you have a recipe or a quotation or a story or a joke or a picture or anything else pecan-related to share on your blog, leave a link in the Mr. Linky, and I’ll also mention you and link to your post again in one of my daily(?) Pecan Posts.

Even better, for everyone who leaves a link to something pecan-like, I’ll put your name in the hat and draw one at the end of the month. The lucky winner will receive a pound of fresh shelled pecans and maybe I’ll even throw in a book, if I find one that is pecan-y enough. We will be making our Annual Pecan Trek this Saturday to beautiful downtown Richmond, Texas, where we go every year to buy pecans. Never fear, I’ll report here on the trip, and one of you will get to sample the pecans that we purchase.

SO, think pecans. (No, I do not work for the Pecan Growers of America, if there is such an organization. However, if there is and if they’d like to send me a few samples of whatever . . . I think we could work a deal.)