This Classical Life

We hope you have fun celebrating whatever you celebrate or don’t on this last day of October. Our church and friends aren’t doing anything special and Kate’s not permitted to eat candy by her mean mom, so we’ll take that as an excuse to bow out of celebrating this year. I predict an evening of curling up with the first season of House on DVD, awaiting us at the public library…

One Wisconsin cat got away with it.

I serve this with rice as a complete meal. It’s one of Mike’s favorites and something he frequently requests, even though it came from a healthy homestyle cookbook of my mother’s and has 7g of fat in each of the four (fairly generous) servings! (more…)

Many thanks to Mrs. Mollie Greene for the privilege of sharing the loveliest tree in Illinois as a header pic here. Mollie’s blog is always a delightful stop in my tour of the ‘roll and if you aren’t enjoying it already, I highly recommend it.

Kate and I met some friends in Charlottesville and went apple picking today. It was great fun! We took a hay ride and then picked some delicious pink ladies and indulged in the best apple cider donut I have ever tasted. I comfortably had her on my back in the Ergo for hours. It definitely accentuated my belly but it felt great and she was happy to hang out there. I love Charlottesville, it’s one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.

Lexi must have put on a pound last week. She is the squirmiest baby in utero, so I am very aware of her size and parameters! It reminds me that her birth is getting ever closer (funny how time marches on…).

It’s been fun to see everyone’s dots on frappr. Thanks for indulging us!

Our hosting company uses a data center in Boca Raton, and the back-up generators there failed, so our site was down. The hosting company posted tons of updates and was very obviously throwing a hissy fit, so that amused me in the meantime. But we’re back now.

I’ve seen these nifty new interactive maps in a few other places recently, and Mike just came across one as well and suggested we add one here. As a visual person, it seemed like a neat idea.

http://www.frappr.com/thisclassicallifereaders

Go there, stick in your name, zipcode, a short message and an optional photo from your hard drive. It takes less than a minute and we’d love to “see” all of our readers. Yes, that includes you lurkers (real-life friends and otherwise!)

I love Konfabulator and its widgets. I don’t actually have that many on my desktop, but the ones I do I use all the time, such as the weather (5 day forecast and current temp) and to do list. But my favorite widget is the grandfather clock, which gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling every time I hear the Westminster chimes on the quarter hours.

I typically try to post a recipe I’ve actually cooked recently, because then its fresh in my mind and I am more excited about it. So, I’ll share what I made last night: London Broil marinaded along the lines of a recipe I got from Laura Leigh, dear friend and occasional commentor on this blog, with our baby spinach, cranberry and walnut salad and mashed sweet potatoes on the side. Mashed sweet potatoes are easy and a nice change of pace. Peel, cube and boil like regular mashed potatoes. When soft, make the right consistency with milk and butter (a little less butter than you would for regular mashed potatoes). Sweeten with real maple syrup and brown sugar (roughly 2:1 MS:BS ratio).

Does she really think this is going to be effective?

We got the latest World Magazine today and I was reading it in the car on our way to midweek communion service and something just really grated my nerves. (more…)

Before I got pregnant, Kate watched a Baby Einstein or two a week. Not quite the AAP recommendation of no TV under age two, but not very much at all. Then, I got pregnant and sick and she started watching television regularly. Even though I let Kate watch TV (which she really likes), I still have principles. (more…)