THANKS FOR LOOKING
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Bribery at it's Best
I came prepared.
Knowing I would use Emmalee as my 'model' while I checked out some new locations
for photo shoots, I packed my purse full of candy.
Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.
Luscher Farm Park in Lake Oswego, OR
While location scouting Sunday in Lake Oswego, I fell in love with this farm. Built around the turn of the twentieth century, the Luscher Farm is the most intact historic farm in Clackamas County. It includes a farmhouse in the Queen Anne style, a gambrel-roof barn, a chicken coop, a garage/bunk house, a community garden and several smaller outbuildings on a 47.71-acre site. It's just what I was looking for, that old rustic country setting. Especially at sunset, it's gorgeous.
Checking out the chicken coop.
Last Days of the Tricycle
Emmalee is outgrowing her tricycle quick. You can see how close her knees are to the handlebars. We went to Toys R Us last weekend and looked at some bikes with training wheels and we let her get on and ride a couple. I can't believe my baby is ready for such a big-girl bike with training wheels! I can't wait to get her a new bike (and hopefully someday soon we can fork out the dough for bikes for me and Ty too).
Foothills Park in Lake Oswego, Oregon
Sunday evening I dragged my husband and daughter to Lake Oswego to do some location scouting. This weekend I have my first high school senior photoshoot with twin girls who live in Lake Oswego, so I needed to prepare.
I tried to get her to sit for a photo, but as you can see she's a flighty girl!
A look down the Willamette River
We enjoyed watching this "pirate ship" go down the Willamette.
one of my proudest moments as a mom
I've been wanting to share this for weeks, but hadn't yet scanned it. While we were at the beach, almost 2 1/2 weeks ago, Emmalee wrote her name for the very first time. All by herself. She isn't yet 3 1/2. And I am still beaming with pride.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Readers Response to: My Calzone
I read with interest and saw the mouth watering pictures of your Calzone. I thought your grandma would enjoy it so I went out to get the ingredients for your Calzone recipe. Now, please recognize that I am not Emeril, Julia Childs, Rachel Ray, or any of those otherfamous chefs / cooks. When I attempt a recipe, I do as I am told ( a trick I learned early in my marriage) and follow directions explicitly with no deviations, creativity, or second guessing ( another trick I learned). To my dismay, our nearest Win Co is clear over in Medford, a round trip of some 60 odd miles. At $4.05 a gallonfor regular fuel and my little truck getting approximately 18 miles per gallon, I determined that it would requireapproximately 3.3 gallons of fuel (presuming there were no construction delays, wrecks, or any other unforeseen reasons that the vehicle would be idle in traffic consuming additional fuel) to go get the flattened pizza dough.At $4.00 per gallon and 3.3 gallons (at the minimum), my cost for this trip would likely be about $13.499 cents, just rounded off, $13.50. So the package of flattened out pizza dough is shaking out to be pretty darn closeto costing me $16.50.
I determined that I could lessen the cost of the trip to Medford by purchasing the other ingredients at the same time. I had heard that Win Co was a pretty decent place to shop for ingredients to all sort of recipes and for snacks andsome general household products. I proceeded to load the items into my shopping cart and was pleased to find thatWin Co had everything I needed except the fresh tomatoes. Upon inquiry, I was told that a local Italian restaurant, the "Olive Garden", had been in earlier and bought every tomato they had. Another shopper volunteered that the"Olive Garden" was featuring Calzone that night and probably needed all the tomatoes they could locate. I finishedgathering the rest of the ingredients and proceeded to check out. I believe that I made a pretty good buy on the items, especiallysince I wasn't going to have to go traipsing all over to accumulate the various items. Other than the tomatoes, of course. I have listed the purchase price for each of the items, primarily so that I could keep a running "tab' on the cost to prepareyour Calzone recipe, which looked and sounded scrumptious! Feel free to review my list and offer comments.
Ingredients:
Pizza dough 3.00
Ricotta Cheese 4.29
Tomato Sauce 2.18
Onions 1.88
Spinach leaves 1.56
Pepperoni 7.29
Chicken Sausage 9.72
Mozzarella Cheese 5.29
Italian Seasoning 1.85
Keeping up with the "tab", I am now at $37.06 for the ingredients and $13.50 for my fuel for a preliminary cost of $50.56,and I still needed the tomatoes. Upon returning to Grants Pass I found that our Farmers Market, did have the required tomatoes. In fact they had their vine ripened tomatoes on sale, which really pleased me. I did some quick calculating ( in my head, as I did nothave a little hand held calculator handy) and determined that it would take me two trips to get the tomatoes as our little truck wasonly rated at one half ton load. Not wanting to be accused of being miserly, I just took it on the chin for the extra fuel expense because it is only about 5 miles to the Farmers Market, which meant it would only be 15 more miles. As you will remember, the little truck gets approximately 18 miles per gallon (without a capacity load), (we don't know what it gets when it so loaded, as the most we usually have is 8-10 sacks of steer manure, at the most).
Long story short, we bought the tomatoes (taking the two trips) and now are set to prepare our version of your Calzone. We did a quickcalculation (fortunately one of those little hand held calculators was handy) and came up with the following total cost involved:
Fuel $13.50
Win Co purchases $37.06
Tomatoes $3980.00
(2000 pounds (a ton) at $1.99 a pound)
Grand total $4030.56
We love you very much and we are always anxious to try out your new and exciting recipes. But.... please remember..... we are on social security and just can not be extravagant with our funds. In future would you please just not send us any recipes that require a ton of tomatoes. My stomach won't tolerate the acid and my wallet won't tolerate the expense!!! We still love you. Don't take this as being critical
Have a great day!!!
Papa and Grandma
PS .... regards those leftovers, we had enough to feed a small African nation!!!
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
nuestra hermosa niña
Emmalee's Auntie (my sister), Uncle Scott and baby Sophie went to Mexico last month for their first family vacation with Sophie. When they came back, my sister gave Emmalee this dress. Sophie has a matching one and someday soon we will get photos of them together in their dresses.
It is noon now. And Emmalee has been wearing this dress since 7pm last night. She wont take it off.
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