Blue and Gold Banquet

Tonight was the annual Blue and Gold Banquet for our own Cub Scout Pack 37.

Daniel's Rain Gutter Regatta cake brought $30 at the cake auction.

Ben's Tollhouse Boy Scout brought $32 at the cake auction, even though it was technically a pie.

Daniel earned his Bear Badge.





Ben crossed over to Boy Scouts in a very nice ceremony. Ben also received the Arrow of Light Award, the highest honor in Cub Scouting. Ben is pictured with Mr. Miller, den leader and part-time cake auctioneer.

We are very proud of our scouts!

A Matter of Trust

One of our favorite board games to play with the boys, or with friends, is Shadows Over Camelot. You get to be one of seven knights in King Arthur's court. You could be Sir Galahad, Sir Tristan, Sir Gawain - you could even be King Arthur himself. You and the other knights work as a team to complete a variety of quests - the search for the Grail, the hunt for Excalibar, warding off the Picts and the Saxons - you could even battle a dragon if you choose. This is what makes Shadows Over Camelot so unique - it's cooperative. You and the other players work to defeat the game, and not each other.

It's not cheap - it retails for $49.95 (you can get it cheaper on ebay) - but it's worth every penny. We have played it more times than I can count - it's a different game every time and it requires a lot of teamwork and strategy to win.

But there's another element to the game. It's optional - you don't have to play this way, but if you like, you can play with a traitor. At the start of each game, you each choose a loyalty card. Your card will tell you if you are loyal to the realm, or if you are a traitor. You don't show anyone your card, and you don't tell anyone what you drew. Typically, if you have five people, you would use six loyalty cards - five loyal knights and one traitor. So you play the game with the possibility that one of you is secretly working against the others. If the team loses, the traitor wins. Tricky stuff.

It is recommended that you play the game several times without the traitor, until you get the hang of how it's played. And so we did. We played probably four or five games with everyone loyal before we introduced the traitor. Keep in mind we only introduced the possibility that there was a traitor in our midst - there was also a chance that no one drew the traitor card and no traitor was present.

Here's the great life lesson I learned from this game: as soon as the possibility of the traitor was introduced, the entire feel of the game changed. Before, if someone wanted to go get Lancelot's armor, we said Great, go to it, how can we help? But when that person might be a traitor, all of the sudden you question his motive. Why do you want the armor? Why shouldn't I have the armor? Or, Why did she do that? Was that just a tactical mistake, or is she plotting something? It blew my mind how differently the game was played when no one quite trusted any one else.

Ironically, we played twice with loyalty cards before anyone actually drew the traitor card. The first two games we just sat there and accused one another and in reality, no one was actually doing anything disloyal.

Strange thing, trust.

This Week's Poll

I would like to direct your attention to a new feature here at mixin' it up: the poll.

No, not a person from Poland. That's a Pole. A poll, as in, "Hey, I'm taking a poll...." Public opinion and all that nonsense.

Anyway, my plan is to change up this poll about once a week (hence the name, This Week's Poll) and ask lots of gut-wrenching, soul-searching questions. Or maybe I'll just go for easy laughs - we'll see what happens.

So far, we're about four days in to our first poll, and I'm honestly surprised at the results. Out of six voters, half of you would chug a latte with Moses. Neil Armstrong is running a close second. I don't know why this surprises me, but it does. See, as fascinating as these two guys are, there are no guarantees that they would be good at conversation. I don't think Moses even speaks English - did you think about that? You'd be out five bucks for the latte and none the wiser. Just some things to consider.

If you haven't voted yet - it's not too late! Visit the side bar and let your voice be heard!

Happy 40th Birthday, Crazy Uncle Paul!

What I'm Reading Now

Body Surfing, by Anita Shreve. She's one of my favorites. The Pilot's Wife and Fortune's Rocks were great books. She's had a couple of duds as well, but this one is good so far. She sometimes tries the unconventional - Body Surfing is written in a series of short, almost understated, paragraphs, and it gives the feeling that you're not quite getting everything. In a previous book, she told the story of a romance in reverse order. I didn't care for it, until the very end, when I got it, and it all made sense. ("Ohhhhhh.")

The one thing she does that I really, really like is she sets many of her books in the same house. Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass (if I recall correctly), The Pilot's Wife, and this one are all set in the same house on the coast of New Hampshire (Or is it Massachusetts? Somewhere up there). They make mention of the people who lived there before them, but they don't know anything about them beyond the basics. (But we do!) After the first two books, I realized she was making the house a character almost - a really interesting element in her stories. Good stuff.

guysread.com

Since most of my readers are guys, or are raising guys, I thought this would be of interest.

We got Ben a really cool book for Christmas - Guys Write for Guys Read. It's an anthology of essays and things written for a web site called guysread.com.

Guysread.com is devoted to literacy for boys. It offers great suggestions for books for boys of all ages - from just being read to, to completely grown up and still reading. It focuses on titles that boys would like - titles like The Day My Butt Went Psycho and The Stupids. The man who founded the web site, Jon Scieskza, is an elementary school teacher, children's book author, and just happened to grow up with five brothers. He knows a thing or two about boys and reading. He created the web site out of a concern for boys' dwindling excitement about reading as they get older, and from the theory that boys would read more, if they had more "boy stuff" to read.

The anthology was created in support of the web site - guy writers and illustrators of all kinds contributed their thoughts about reading and writing - for guys. David Shannon shares the origin of No, David! (he wrote it when he was five). Avi tells of a comic book drive that he organized when he was a kid to get reading materials to patients in a veterans hospital (he couldn't stop reading the comic books himself long enough to send them to anyone). Richard Peck, Rick Reilly, Stephen King - they're all in here. Ben is really enjoying it (he told me the Avi story on the way home from school today.)

So check it out. There's a lot of good information out there.

Let's Play Tag!

Apparently, I've been tagged in some bizarre blog game. These are the rules:

Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
Find Page 123.
Find the first 5 sentences.
Post the next 3 sentences.
Tag 5 people.

So, the nearest book to me right now is Southern Belly by John T. Edge (for more information, see previous post about this book). Page 123 gives details about a Starnes' Barbeque in Owensboro, Kentucky. My three sentence are as follows:

"They might do their meat different, their sauce different. It's all different out there. But we do it the way we've always done it, cooking over hickory for ten to twelve hours."

At this point I am supposed to tag five people who have to perform this feat of posting as well. However, George already tagged almost all of the other bloggers I know, so I am simply going to tag you if you read this and have a blog. Get posting, people!

Just How Stupid Are We?

Ok, so I bought this gift card (one of you will be learning more about this card in the coming days). Anyway, as I'm preparing this card for mailing, I notice the following instructions printed on the paper backing:

Remove tab and fold in thirds.

Tuck tab into slot to close.

Personalize and present gift.

Present gift? Is this a truly necessary part of the instructions? I only ask because I know that all safety warnings come from someone actually doing the foolish thing in question (yes, someone apparently used a hair dryer in the bath tub, and yes, someone apparently strapped their baby into an exer-saucer and sent him sailing down a snowy embankment). So I have to assume that somewhere out there, some guy returned a gift card to the store saying "This is a piece of crap! It doesn't work! It just sits there on my dresser and my friend is still not happy!"

Are we truly that stupid? Are we moving to a point where we have to spell everything out for everyone? Do grocery store cashiers need to start telling shoppers "You know, you're gonna want to consume those tomatoes eventually." Where do we draw the line?

So what say you? What evidence of the growing stupidity of man have you seen lately?

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Recap

I finally finished the Kingsolver book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. It was quite good. A little bit tedious at times, more than a little preachy at times, but definitely worth my time.

This family of four moved to Southwest, VA and pledged to eat nothing but food they could grow themselves or buy from local farmers. Their goal was to a) see if it could be done and b) be greener. (See, we burn a lot of gas transporting strawberries from Florida to Minnesota in January.)

They quickly determined there are some things you just can't grow and produce yourself, at least not on a small farm in Virginia. Coffee. Olive Oil. Most spices. So for the things that they couldn't live without and couldn't grow, they made allowances, but thoroughly researched who they bought from (how far did it travel? did it come from a country practicing fair trade? etc.) before agreeing to purchase anything.

Otherwise, they grew it or raised it before they ate it. And did a fair job of canning and storing to get them through the winter. It was a pretty impressive undertaking.

I learned quite a bit that I didn't know - the whole local food movement was new to me (they call themselves locavores), but now I see evidence of it everywhere. I learned not to trust labels until you thoroughly research what things like "organic" and "free range" can include - for example, "free range" chickens can live in a building no where near big enough for the lot of them, as long as they can go outside in a small pin once a day for about an hour (sounds like a maximum security prison). I learned that seventy percent of the commercial farms in this country grow corn or soybean, which means we have to find uses for all that corn and soybean (read: corn syrup and fillers) to keep the farmers going. I learned that cheese is not hard to make at home - all you need is the equipment (unless you just happen to have bacteria lying around.)

I would be interested to read some opposing arguments on this topic (as I said, she was a bit preachy at times) but I enjoyed the book. Am I planning to start raising turkeys in my back yard? Not likely, but I have been inspired to at least consider the idea of a small garden. Herbs maybe. If not to be greener, just because locally grown food tastes so much better. And it's good to dig in the dirt.

So check it out if you're interested. And if you're interested but you just don't want to read the book, you can visit animalvegetablemiracle.com for information on local food sources (farmer's markets, commercial farms that sell direct to consumers, etc) and some interesting recipes.

Happy Birthday Mark!

My wonderful husband and best friend is 41 today!

Have a great one - I love you!

My Superbowl

Buffalo wings. Chips and cheesy sausage dip. Chocolate wafers with peanut butter icing. Cheesy doodles. Push-ups (the sherbert kind, not the physical exertion kind.)

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Tom Petty. Good times. How old was that bass player?

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So the guys asked what we could do with all this extra coin, and I'm like "I'm rentin' a clown!"

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Daniel: "Why is Peyton Manning clapping?"
Mark: "He's cheering for his brother."
Ben: "No, I think he just hates Tom Brady, mostly."

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Go Giants.

More Where in DC?

I don't think these will be nearly as fun, as they were ruled out of my original post for being "too obvious" (that, and we aren't in any of these pics). Let's see if I'm right....the last one also takes us out of DC proper, to one of its outlying attractions.

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Where in DC?

In the spirit of Kyle's Where in SC? series, I give you Where in DC? These are all pics taken on our vacation to our nation's capital last summer. Can you tell where exactly we are?

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Brining...It's Not Just For Turkeys Anymore

One of the best things Alton Brown ever taught me is the beauty of brining meat. Not just chicken and turkey...pork roasts, beef roasts, steaks...he even recommends brining shrimp, which I have to admit, I haven't tried yet. But once I started, I never went back.

AB explains the brining process very scientifically in his book I'm Just Here For the Food. It has something to do with cells trying to equal salt levels by bringing the outside water in and sending the inside water out. Or something. It was really over my head. All I know is....it rocks. Every time. For two reasons:

1. It flavors the inside of the meat. You know how salting food while you cook it makes it takes more like itself, but salting food after it's done just makes it taste salty? Same principle. You get all this salt flavor inside the meat, but it doesn't taste salty. It just tastes awesome.

2. For those of us who like our meat more on the done side, brining allows you to cook the meat longer without drying it out. It takes in so much water, that you could cook it for days and it would still be juicy.

So here's AB's basic brine:

• Bring 2 cups of water to a boil.
• Once boiling, dissolve 1/2 cup kosher salt and 1/2 cup sugar in the water.
• Once dissolved, pour into two cups of ice (this increases the water by 2 cups, and cools down the boiling water so you can put the meat in it without cooking it).
• Put the brining solution into a big ziplock bag and add the meat.
• Squeeze out all the excess air before zipping closed.
• Refrigerate for eight hours or overnight. If you don't have eight hours, or didn't plan ahead, you can still brine for a shorter period of time, but more is better.

It's that easy. Once you get used to this brine, you can change it up some by adding other flavors, but I love this one so much that I haven't changed it. I use this amount of brining solution for a whole chicken, pork tenderloin, or eye of round roast. If I'm brining something thinner, like a flank steak, I usually reduce the salt and sugar by half; otherwise, it can get salty. If I'm brining something bigger, like two chickens or a turkey, I increase the salt and sugar by a quarter or so and double the water (you'll get the hang of it after a while).

I don't know what this solution does to the nutritional value of the meat, and I don't want to know. I can't go back now so why bother with all that bad news.

So next time you're having the in-laws over and you really want to wow them with your meat skills, throw your main course through a brine before cooking. You'll be glad you did.

How Great Thou Art

Then sings my soul

My Saviour, God, to Thee

How great Thou art

How great Thou art