Saturday Snapshot

Best Friends Ever!!!

(minus about 39 of them)

I love this photo.  

About 3 years ago, we tried a Friday Friend 'get-together'  and I was lucky because 11 out of about 50 of my closest friends from all over came to my birthday party.

From PA, AZ, CA, WA, OR, NV.

They didn't know each other....and yet...they did.

(That's how social media works!)

(That, and they all had/have  ME in common)

I am linking with  Melinda of West Metro Mommy Reads and her 

Saturday Snapshot meme.

It's time for a....Summer-cation!

Sheila from Book Journey is hosting a Summer-Cation Blog Hop.

Ahhhhh.....Summer!

She says:

Happy Summer-Cation!  As I mentioned last weekend on the blog, I just need to do something SUNNY!  I decided to host a last minute “let’s talk about something shiny” (THE SUN!) event where others were and are invited to join me to post something about a summery event, a giveaway, summer plans, WHATEVER as long as no snow or cold is involved.

I repeat….

No Snow and NO Cold can be mentioned in your posts. 

Oh man.  I cannot mention S--w   or  C--d, because those things are EXACTLY what we want to get away from.  I must hide my inner rebel who feels like shouting it out--just once.  It's like when someone tells me not to touch the hot plate,  I still have to feel it--just once.  But I will resist.  NO S--W will be mentioned here.......  this is all about the SUNSHINE.

One thing I love. LOVE. LOVE!    Is sunlight shining on water.  Lakes, ponds, rivers....with sunlight sparkling on the waves, ripples or smooth, glass like surfaces.    I LOVE IT.     Sunlight shining on water is one of my favorite things ever!

I love to hike in the mountains, on the beach, thru the woods and come upon sunlight on the water,  it's the most beautiful thing to me.  Throw in some spring wildflowers and MAN OH MAN.

Don't you just want to go NOW?    Let's go for a hike and check out this most beautiful WINTER (I did not mention  S--w or C--d) buster!    Come on, get your shoes on---we are going for a SUNNY hike.   Before I show you our (just pretend you are doing this sunny hike with me)  photos,  I want to tell you how you can win this coffee mug (coffee is good on early SUMMER mornings.  Good with a book while sitting on your patio after your early SUNNY hike):

It's the "Greatest First Lines Ever" mug. I love it and I want you to have one too!   All you have to do is make a comment on this blog post. ( I would love to be your friend on Goodreads too, but that is not a requirement),  just make a comment and I will randomly choose a winner to receive this wonderful 'literary'  mug.   My friend Sally thinks it would be a great challenge to read every book on this mug. What do you think?

Okay now... a collection where we are going to take our sunny hike to see "Sunlight on the Water"

Bookmark Monday

I have a collection of bookmarks, so I was excited to come across  "Bookmark Monday"  at Guiltless Reading. 

 Because really what else are you going to do with a collection of bookmarks? Except share!

My bookmark for Monday is a "Lewis and Clark" bookmark.  This is actually a scanned copy of mine.

My husband and I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, where the Lewis and Clark trail is everywhere you turn. 

It's one of the most well known historical attractions in the area, spanning many states, beginning in Illinois and ending at the mouth of the Columbia River as it spills into the Pacific Ocean between Washington and Oregon.

We grew up knowing all about Lewis and Clark. So it saddened me  when I went back to Virginia a few years ago, and encountered someone on the plane, a local man (we were flying from Richmond to Atlanta), who had no idea about Lewis and Clark and their mapping of the Louisiana Purchase and search for the Northwest passage.  We were discussing with him what wonderful history Virginia had.  It was a nice visit, but it always makes me sad that the west gets no respect when it comes to the history of the United States.

I live in the west, but I LOVE every regional thing about all of the United States.   I would love to travel and experience every state, every town, every people!

This is the Lewis and Clark Trail

It's Monday and Good old dry Nevada

It is Monday and I'm reading....what I said I wanted to read in last week's First Chapter, First Paragraph,  Tuesday Intros.

I don't always do that, (read the book immediately) so that's been kind of fun...it was the book in my last post,  At Home in the World by Joyce Maynard.

It is amazing.  If you like memoirs.  And intellectual talk about books.

I do like all  those things, so am finding this read about Maynard's life fascinating. 

It's Monday,  What are you Reading is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.  A fun place to pop into every Monday to see what is on everyone's reading list.

I find my best books from these people who participate!

Speaking of Sheila from Book Journey, she is hosting a 

summer-cation, and I'm joining in!

It's a weekend blog hop  (this coming weekend) and I'm not really sure how it works, BUT I will be posting my summerloving summerdreaming, summerwishing blog post. And I'll have a give away.   And I'll be visiting all the other blogs who are having a SUMMER-CATION.  

I don't have snow like in the mid-west and back east, but we did drive home thru this yesterday:

There is no sunshine, this is no warm, summer scene.

This is much needed rain in California!

So, good for them, BUT scary to drive thru.

I was glad to see  good ol' dry Nevada.  (we don't have weather issues when it comes to driving--usually.)

So I will participate in the Summer-Cation this weekend.

I can't wait!

See you then.

First Chapter, First Paragraph, Tuesday Intros

Hello!  It is me---your very favorite, but always late, Pacific Time Zone, blogger!

Being a procrastinator and participating in memes sometimes is a problem.  I mean, it's only 8:00 pm here in the west,  but I think it's just about midnight in New England...where Diane of Bibliophile by the Sea, is hopefully waiting patiently for her last blogger to post  in  First Chapter, First Paragraph, Tuesday Intros.   That would be me!

Go to sleep now Diane.

But before you drift  off---think of this first sentence-first paragraph:

When I was eighteen, I wrote a magazine article that changed my life.  The piece was called, "An Eighteen Year Old Looks Back on Life."  It was published in the New York Times Magazine with a photograph of me on the cover.  In it, I described growing up in the sixties, expressing a profound sense of world-weariness and alienation.  I spoke of wanting  to move to the country and get away from the world.  "Retirement sounds tempting," I wrote.

What do you think? Would you keep reading?

I think I will!  The book is  "At Home in the World" by Joyce Maynard, the author of Labor Day (which has just been released as a movie starring Josh Brolin ).    This is a memoir of her life and her affair with JD Salinger when she was 18  (he loved her article, wrote, told her so and they began a correspondence which later evolved into a love affair) and he was 53.
I just love memoirs.  And authors.  And correspondences.  (I am a huge letter writer).    I will read this one very soon  (before the library makes me give it back!)

This is what Goodreads has to say about it:

When it was first published in 1998, At Home in the World set off a furor in the literary world and beyond. Joyce Maynard's memoir broke a silence concerning her relationship--at age eighteen--with the famously reclusive author J.D. Salinger, then age fifty-three, who had read a story she wrote for The New York Times in her freshman year of college and sent her a letter that changed her life.

With what some have viewed as shocking honesty, Maynard explores her coming of age in an alcoholic family, her mother's dream to mold her into a writer, her self-imposed exile from the world of her peers when she left Yale to live with Salinger, and her struggle to reclaim her self of sense in the crushing aftermath of his dismissal of her not long after her nineteenth birthday. A quarter of a century later--having become a writer, survived the end of her marriage and the deaths of her parents, and with an eighteen-year-old daughter of her own--Maynard pays a visit to the man who broke her heart. The story she tells--of the girl she was and the woman she became--is at once devastating, inspiring, and triumphant.

Spicy Hermits

I have come across Hermit Cookies off an on over the years, and I've always wanted to make them.   It's just that a highly spiced cookie is not something on my family's 'LOVE'  list.  But yesterday I thought  "to heck with them" and made them anyway.

The Handyman does not like them.  My DIL, Jess, does.   No one else in my family has tried any.  I was thinking of sending one or two, wrapped in plastic wrap, to my grandchildren in their 'pen-pal' letter this week, but I am not so sure that raisins and ginger and molasses will appeal to them either.

Having said that tho, this really is a good cookie.   Soft and chewy and highly spicy.  Like a soft gingersnap.    And yet---different.  Really different from my     Soft and spicy Gingersnaps.      And also very different from my  Soft, Chewy, Molasses Spice Cookie (with orange essence) .

It seems as if I LOVE a spice cookie, as they are coming in 2nd to what kind of cookies I make most often... Chocolate Chip being #1!

Spicy Hermits are an old, old fashioned cookie: a chewy, raisin spice cookie with a sweet glaze.  A New England specialty.  So, they are kind of a regional thing, I guess.    I've just always wanted to try them.   I like them.  And they are really easy to make---just a couple of steps and then roll them into a log  (which looks pretty gross), bake them, drizzle glaze and then cut them into bars.   I've  looked on the internet and in Canada they use dates also, which I think would be very good.   I might try that next time.

Spicy Hermits

from Cook's Illustrated

Ingredients

1 cup  raisins

2 tablespoons  finely chopped crystallized ginger 

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter 

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground allspice

2 cups  all-purpose flour, plus more for the board

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon table salt

3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar

1/2 cup mild/light molasses 

2 large eggs, room temperature

1 1/2 tablespoons orange juice

3/4 cup  confectioners' sugar

Instructions

Process raisins and ginger in food processor until mixture sticks together and only small pieces remain, about 10 seconds. Transfer mixture to large bowl.

Cut butter into 5 pieces and heat in small saucepan over medium-low heat, swirling pan occasionally, until nutty brown in color, about 10 minutes. Watch it carefully because once it starts to brown it can burn easily. Stir in cinnamon and allspice and cook until fragrant, about 15 seconds. Stir butter mixture into raisin mixture until well combined; let cool to room temperature. (Note: It will not form a paste but will still have some liquid around the raisin mixture. Set on a wire rack for faster cooling.)

Whisk flour, baking soda, and salt in bowl to combine. Stir brown sugar, molasses, and eggs into cooled butter-raisin mixture until incorporated. Dump in flour mixture and fold in with a rubber spatula just until combined. Dough will be very sticky.

Refrigerate, covered, until firm, at least 1 1/2 hours or up to 24 hours. 

If using one oven, adjust racks to upper-middle and lower-middle positions and heat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. 

Use spatula to turn dough out onto a large piece of parchment paper. Cut dough into quarters, using a bench scraper. 

Transfer one piece of dough to lightly floured board and with lightly floured hands roll into 10-inch log, about 1 1/2-inches wide.

Transfer to a prepared baking sheet.  Use ruler to neatly square off sides. Repeat with remaining dough.

Bake until only shallow indentation remains on edges when touched (center will appear slightly soft), 15 - 20 minutes, switching and rotating baking sheets halfway through baking. Let cool on baking sheets for 5 minutes, then transfer parchment to wire racks and let cool completely.

Whisk orange juice and confectioners' sugar in small bowl until smooth.  Drizzle glaze onto cooled logs and let sit until glaze hardens, about 15 minutes. 

Transfer parchment to a cutting board. Cut off ends and cut logs (with a serrated knife) into 1 1/2-inch bars, 7 - 8 per log.  

a couple of pictures of the "log" (it looks like sausage!) and the what they look like when they come out of the oven:

I am linking up to Weekend Cooking  (this week I am coveting the cookbook she is sharing)

and   See Ya in the Gumbo

Saturday Snapshot

What's wrong with this picture?

the definition of a forest:

1.

a large tract of land covered with trees and underbrush; woodland.

2.

the trees on such a tract: to cut down a forest.

3.

a tract of wooded grounds in England formerly belonging to the sovereign and set apart for game.

4.

a thick cluster of vertical objects: a forest of church spires.

We don't usually have  large tracts of land covered with trees.

We have large, vast lands covered with sagebrush.  Like this.

So, why do you think the United States Forest Service  (or the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as the sign states )  deems this  a "National Forest"?
I've always wondered that....as has everyone else who lives in the state of Nevada.

It's not to say you won't come upon a small grove of Aspens.  They're here.  It's just that when I think of a forest, I think of  evergreens, pines and firs and spruces.  Not Aspens.
Although,  one of the most wonderful sounds in the world is the sound of the Aspen leaves with a breeze flowing thru them.
You'll have to come visit to find out.

We don't even have FOREST fires in the Humboldt National Forest---we have 'wildfires'

I am linking up with West Metro Mommy and her Saturday Snapshot meme.