food, crochet, merriment
“Ask yourself, ‘How did God bless me today?’ If you do that long enough and with faith, you will find yourself remembering blessings. And sometimes, you will have gifts brought to your mind which you failed to notice during the day, but which you will then know were a touch of God’s hand in your life.”
–Henry B. Eyring
:}
Ooooh, there’s something so magical about sitting on that poofy couch–watching your daughter, your baby daughter, try on one beautiful white dress after another.
Swishing past so you can touch it if you want to.
Walking a straight line just to see if the train trails behind just perfectly…as it should.
With a sash around the middle…
…or a satin ribbon?
Will it be the flowered veil, or a simple one with tiny sparkles? Decisions, decisions.
Then flouncing back to the dressing room to try another one.
And in the end our dear little bride-to-be chose the dress that made her feel most like a princess from her favorite fairy tale…as we knew she would.
Happily, I’m truly just along for the ride because the perfect dress for the biggest day in her life simply MUST be her choice. The one that feels right and makes all the searching…just stop.
The dress of her dreams.
*****
Fear not~I didn’t actually show you the one that she picked, because that would be…well, just wrong. Besides, we couldn’t risk Prince Charming getting snoopy, now could we?
When I was a kid, we didn’t do a lot of sleepovers–mostly because we lived in a shady part of town and nobody actually wanted to drive through it, never mind sleep in it. But now and then, we would spend the night with a close friend or relative. Sadly, I earned the reputation of being a runaway and never really lasting the evening without either calling for my mom to pick me up or running home after everyone else fell asleep.
Yeah, I was a pain.
Some of my anxiety came from being a home-body and getting genuinely homesick, but a lot of it came from worrying about…
breakfast.
I’d had a couple of near-death experiences with some dear friends whose moms made gooey French Toast, eggs over easy or sunny-side up,—which in my vocabulary all meant…raw. We never ate them that way at home and it would always totally freak me out. Oh, I wasn’t a jerk about it or anything, but I was so afraid that I’d betray the fact that uncooked eggs made me gag, and in a sincere desire to not be offensive, I’d lay awake long after everyone else was asleep worrying about it. Then, sometime in the wee hours, I’d claw my way home…figuratively speaking. With that set up—
Over the years, it’s been fun to find and tweak some of the best egg recipes in the universe so that they fit the persnickety egg tastes of my little family. Yes…yes, I passed my raw-ish egg phobia lovingly on to my children. I couldn’t help it. Anyway, we’re particularly proud of our luscious, moist-but-totally-not-raw-or-gooey-inside Cinnamon French Toast. A big key to it’s loveliness lies is the fact that it’s made with 100% whole wheat bread–the rest is probably just, you know, magic.
Heh, heh.
Cinnamon French Toast
Ingredients:
4 eggs
1 teaspoon sugar
dash salt
1 cup milk
1/4 cinnamon
12 slices whole wheat bread
Directions:
Whirl everything–except the bread–in the blender until frothy–about 15 seconds. Pour into a low, squatty bowl. Heat griddle and coat with a thin layer of butter.
Place bread slices, one at a time, into the egg mixture for about 2 seconds, then turn the bread over to lightly soak the other side–for 2 seconds.
Remove bread and heat slowly on griddle, until bottom is golden brown, then turn and brown the other side. Remove and stagger-stack on a paper plate–which helps it not “sweat” while waiting to be served. Butter each cooked slice while the new batch is on the griddle. Serve with Buttermilk Syrup to an adoring family.
Store any leftovers in a ziploc bag and reheat in the toaster.
Truth be told, I’ve never really been one to walk around outside in the yard just to snap 600 pictures of a gnarly old tree.
Until now, that is.
See, we have this incredible crab apple tree out front that–when the stars align just right–will one day be green and plain and overnight, will explode into this magical, cotton-candy-pink creation that literally takes your breath away.
No kidding. We’ve actually had people stop their cars in the middle of the road and tell us how beautiful our whole street is…
because of this one tree. But look long and hard, because it will only last a couple of days and then, the petals fade and blow away.
Funny thing is, that we’d taken this pretty thing nearly for granted for a couple of years. You know, “Oh, look–the tree’s pink again,” that sort of thing, until one time when it just didn’t ever bloom…at all.
We thought maybe it was a every-other-year type thing.
Then the next Spring we had a hard frost and when nothing blossomed in the yard anywhere, we figured the cold was to blame.
Then last April, we wondered out loud if we had done something wrong or if the tree was old and giving up, or what could possibly be the matter. Almost as if it was trying to soothe our worries, a few scant blossoms appeared…a bare handful, here and there.
So this year, we watched and waited, anxious to see if our tree still had it, or not. And to our surprise, and relief, one day we woke up to all of this…
and this…
and this.
Oh, those delicate, tissue flowers, that beautiful, perfect shade of pink–how we’ve missed you!
Welcome, welcome back.
