Friendship
October 28, 2008
“We all lose friends.. we lose them in death, to distance and over time. But even though they may be lost, hope is not. The key is to keep them in your heart, and when the time is right, you can pick up the friendship right where you left off. Even the lost find their way home when you leave the light on.”
~ Amy Marie Walz
Posted by Deb 2 Comments »
Topics: quotations
Sausage, Mushroom & Spinach Quiche
October 15, 2008
Those of you who know me, know that I don’t cook much. It isn’t that I am a bad cook, because when I do make something, it is usually pretty good. It isn’t even that I dislike the act of cooking, rather that I am impatient with the time it takes and hate cleaning up afterward. The only thing I always cook is my own spaghetti sauce because it is so much better than from a jar, not to mention so much healthier.
I also like to make quiche. We’re not big on large evening meals so quiche is perfect with a muffin and some fruit. Every year we do a Christmas breakfast with my girls which often consists of various kinds of quiche. Over the years I’ve tried countless recipes and have settled on a few favorites.
Today I was home sick from work so I took the time to make quiche for dinner. This one has held its place at the top of the favorites list for several years. Enjoy!
Sausage, Mushroom & Spinach Quiche
1 lb. ground pork & herb breakfast sausage (I use Bob Evan’s Savory Sage)
1/2 cup sliced fresh mushrooms
1/2 cup frozen spinach, thawed
1/4 cup chopped parsley
3 eggs
1 cup half-and-half cream
1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
1 (10” deep dish) unbaked pie crust
- Preheat oven to 400º F.
- Crumble sausage into large skillet, add mushrooms and cook on medium heat until browned; drain thoroughly.
- Squeeze excess moisture from spinach with paper towel; stir spinach and parsley into meat mixture.
- Mix together eggs, cream, cheese, salt and pepper.
- Spread meat mixture evenly into pie crust; pour egg mixture over top.
- Bake in preheated oven for 25-30 minutes, until crust is browned and filling is set; let stand for 10 minutes before cutting.
Posted by Deb 1 Comment »
My Top 25 Albums
October 8, 2008
I have this major personality flaw — whenever there is something I really *need* to be doing, I procrastinate and instead fritter away the time doing completely trivial things like making lists. Right now on my dining room table sits a pile of letterbox stamps I have yet to carve for the County Fair gathering next weekend. I carved for a while earlier this evening and then got side-tracked making this list of my top albums of all time… where this came from, I have no idea. My original intent was 10 albums, but the OCD in me just couldn’t stop at 10, so it’s a top 25 list (even that was really hard).
Let me just say that these are *my* favorite albums — I make no claims that they are all *great* albums in terms of sales or mass appeal or technical genius, just that they have endured as albums I love to listen to over and over again without skipping tracks or getting bored. They are comfortable, like old friends — it may have been a while we last connected, but each visit is more intimate than the last and leaves me wondering why I waited so long and promising to spend more time together.
So, in no particular order…
- R.E.M. - Automatic for the People
- U2 - The Joshua Tree
- Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
- Pink Floyd - The Wall
- The Who - Who’s Next
- Cowboy Junkies - Pale Sun, Crescent Moon
- Lucinda Williams - Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
- Fleetwood Mac - Rumors
- Van Morrison - Moondance
- Roxy Music - Avalon
- Bruce Springsteen - Born in the U.S.A.
- Camel - Nude
- Collective Soul - Collective Soul
- Eric Clapton - Slowhand
- Meatloaf - Bat Out of Hell
- Def Leppard - Hysteria
- Neil Young - After the Gold Rush
- John Hiatt - Bring the Family
- Jewel - Goodbye Alice in Wonderland
- Counting Crows - Recovering the Satellites
- Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water
- Boston - Boston
- Kirsty MacColl - Kite
- The Band - The Last Waltz
- Fish - Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors
There, now that I’ve got that out of the way maybe I can get some carving done.
Posted by Deb 1 Comment »
Fire Hydrants Should Be Red
September 28, 2008
Some things we just know by association, like green means go and school buses are yellow and blinking red lights mean trouble. These are references we learned as children and they are nigh unto sacred. So what’s up with people who change these kinds of things? Did they just get bored with the familiarity or do they have some sick sense of humor that gleefully looks forward to watching people with dazed and confused looks on their faces?
I remember when the town I lived in started sounding the fire siren at noon every day. It had been announced in the paper in some tiny-print ad buried between tuna salad recipes and theatre schedules. Had they really wanted people to see it, it should have been strategically placed between the obituaries and the police blotter (it was a small town). Needless to say there were a lot of people who hadn’t read the notice and were convinced our cloudless summer sky was about to spout a toranado or fighter planes would soon be descending on our little city. You just can’t go upsetting the status quo without getting people in a tizzy.
Think about fire hydrants — when I was a kid, they were red, every last one of them. Now the color of a fire hydrant is really of no great significance to me, but think about it from a dog’s perspective. When you learn to lift your leg at a red iron thing on the street corner, it must be really confusing when some overzealous city engineer comes around and paints them all yellow during the night. And just recently I have seen a blue fire hydrant, what is this rainbow thing happening with fire hydrants?
Posted by Deb No Comments »
Topics: perceptions
From California to New York…
September 16, 2008
After a long Monday at work, I came home to find a couple of special treats waiting for me in yesterday’s mail…
A padded manilla envelope held the USA mix CD compiled for me by my Swapbot partner, dianabanana. I have not had a chance to enjoy it yet but I am anxious to sit down for a listen. Her mix is definitely bolder than mine and while I am familiar with many of the artists and songs, I will also be treated to several I have not heard before. I especially liked her creative track listing, which is a map of the USA with the song titles scattered over the image, their track number landing in the physical location of the city or state. The 20 songs she used on her CD, titled “From California to New York (with a few stops along the way)”, are:
- Look Inside America (Blur) — great lead song!
- California (Low)
- California (Semisonic)
- Drinking in L.A. (Bran Van 3000)
- L.A. Song (Fischerspooner)
- LA, CA, USA (Stereo Total)
- Hollywood (Nada Surf)
- Texas Never Whispers (Pavement)
- Chicago (Groove Armada)
- Sodom, South Georgia (Iron & Wine)
- Atlanta (Stone Temple Pilots)
- Baltimore (Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks)
- NYC (interpol)
- Piazza, New York Catcher (Belle & Sebastian)
- I Can’t See New York (Tori Amos)
- New York City (The Jesus & Mary Chain)
- Marching Bands Of Manhattan (Death Cab For Cutie) — love this song
- Vanessa From Queens (Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks)
- Driving Down By The Hudson River (Yuka Honda)
- United States Of Whatever (Liam Lynch)
The other pleasant surprise in my mailbox was a Postcrossing card from Krista in Holland. The card she sent was a collage of scenes from the Island of Texel, which is the area where many of my ancestors are from. It was fun reading her description of Texel and the things she enjoys doing there. I must visit there someday…
Posted by Deb 2 Comments »
Topics: mix cd, swaps, music, postcards
Traveling Thru America
September 15, 2008
This weekend I finished up the USA songs mix CD I was working on for a trade at Swapbot. I had narrowed down the semi-final list of songs to 19 selections prior to leaving on vacation (see this post for project info and my semi-final song list). I listened to them on and off over the past couple of weeks making sure that none grew stale on me and playing around with the order. I love the final selections, but am not entirely happy with the order, particularly at the end. It was difficult to get an idea flow from songs with such diverse themes, although the music tone and intensity ebbs and flows nicely. I ended up adding one song back into the mix, for a total of 20 songs:
- Traveling Thru America (Griffin House)
- Boston (Augustana)
- Leaving New York (REM)
- St. Paul (We The Living)
- Minneapolis (Lucinda Williams)
- Angel From Montgomery (Bonnie Raitt)
- Streets Of Philadelphia (Bruce Springsteen)
- Crazy In Alabama (Kate Campbell)
- Georgia Girl (Collective Soul)
- Loop Around Atlanta (Kasey Chambers & the Dead Ringer Band)
- Mississippi (Sheryl Crow)
- Reno (Alex Woodard with Sara Watkins)
- Long Island Shores (Mindy Smith)
- Indiana (Jon McLaughlin)
- Poughkeepsie (Over The Rhine)
- When Detroit Was Burning (Cathie Ryan)
- Dear Chicago (Ryan Adams)
- Angel Of Harlem (U2)
- Incognito In California (Tim Finn)
- Miami (Counting Crows)
I titled my mix, “Traveling Thru America” (from track #1), added a snazzy cover and track listing and mailed it off to my swap partner. My hope is that she not only finds it enjoyable listening, but also that she is introduced to a couple of artists she was not previously familiar with.
Upcoming projects I’m doing at Swapbot are a hand-carved stamp swap and a couple more mix CD trades.
Posted by Deb 2 Comments »
Empty Flickr Photo Box
September 14, 2008
Recently I have this extra (empty) Flickr photo box over there at the top of the right-hand sidebar (there are only supposed to be 4 boxes, like there are for albums). I thought it might be related to upgrading my Firefox to version 3.0.1 as it is really the only thing that has changed about my site or environment in the past couple of weeks. But alas, it is also there when I view the site in IE, which would indicate it is most likely related to the Flickr badge script, as it is highly unlikely that both Firefox and IE have simultaneously started to interpret my CSS differently than 2 weeks ago. Guess I’ll have to figure that out…
UPDATE — 9/16/08… this appears to have fixed itself. I would love to claim it was my coding genious, but I hadn’t even gotten around to looking at it yet.
Posted by Deb No Comments »
Topics: geek speak, web site
City Songs
August 30, 2008
For a trade at Swap-bot, I am working on a mix CD containing songs with the names of US cities or states in the titles. This is an easy mix to compile as compared to others since it focuses on the titles rather than song themes, although I am tending to choose songs that say something to me in addition to just sounding good. Outside of the swap guidelines, I’ve set a few additional restrictions for my mix — not more than one song by any particular artist or group and not more than one song about any specific city or state. My initial playlist was 134 songs, which I’ve weeded down to 33, but this includes 4 California songs, 3 Georgia songs and 2 New York songs, as well as a couple of artist doubles, which will need to be culled down in keeping with the rules I set.
Even though the title does not reference a city or state, I am planning to open the CD with the song, “Traveling Thru America” by Griffin House. There are several cities/states mentioned in the song and it feels like a great intro to the theme of the CD.
The other songs currently on the semi-final list, in no particular order yet, are:
Reno - Alex Woodard (with Sara Watkins)
Boston - Augustana
Angel from Montgomery - Bonnie Raitt
Streets of Philadelphia - Bruce Springsteen
When Detroit was Burning - Cathie Ryan
Memphis - Catie Curtis
Hollywood - Collective Soul
Miami - Counting Crows
Stephenville, TX - Jewel
Indiana - Jon McLaughlin
North Dakota - Chris Knight
Loop Around Atlanta - Kasey Chambers and the Dead Ringer Band
Crazy in Alabama - Kate Campbell
Long Island Shores - Mindy Smith
Ohio - Neil Young
Poughkeepsie - Over the Rhine
Dear Chicago - Ryan Adams
Mississipppi - Sheryl Crow
Stop In Nevada - Billy Joel
Angel of Harlem - U2
St. Paul - We the Living
Marching Bands Of Manhattan - Death Cab For Cutie
Minneapolis - Lucinda Williams
Bus To Baton Rouge - Lucinda Williams
Georgia Girl - Collective Soul
Georgia Boy - Pete Yorn
Why Georgia - John Mayer
The New York Times - Everclear
Leaving New York - R.E.M.
California Snow - Dave Alvin
Not California - Hem
California - Melissa Etheridge
Incognito in California - Tim Finn
Now the tough part, narrowing it down to just 16-18 songs… Choosing between the 2 New York songs will be one of the most difficult things because I very much like both of these songs. “Leaving New York” is one of my all-time favorite R.E.M. songs. Not only are there times and situations when I have related completely to the lyrics, but it contains one of the greatest lines, “It’s easier to leave than to be left behind…” Meanwhile, Everclear’s “New York Times” is a catchy tune and the lyrics are inspiring…
It makes no sense to me,
This eye for an eye thing,
It has gone too far
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t hurt inside
I would like to believe we could learn from this
And maybe some day we can make things right
I want to believe in this world
I want to believe in this life
I want to believe in a world that does not seem real
When you read between the lines
[snip]
I want to believe we can make things right
I want to believe
I want to believe
I want to believe
I want to believe
Oh, I want to believe in this world
I want to believe in this life
I want to believe in a world that does not seem real
When I read the New York Times
Makes you think, makes you hope, makes you want to believe…
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