Ice cream cone crepes

The older two munchkins were outside, so I put the baby down on the mat where she could watch them. Entertainment for hours! She wants to crawl soooo bad.

Last night I wanted a waffle cone in the worst way, so I went sniffing about to see how to make an ice cream cone.

I discovered this recipe where you just roll up crepes.

Mine looked more or less like that, only more randomly-sized and without the perfect scoops of ice cream in them. But they tasted FABULOUS. Exactly like a waffle cone! Everybody ate the extra crepes plain once the ice cream ran out.

Recipe:

2 large eggs
1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated white sugar
4 tablespoons (57 grams) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 - 3 tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/3 cup (50 grams) all purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
Vegetable oil and pastry brush

Oil your griddle set it to medium-low heat, pour on 3 Tbsp batter and tilt griddle to spread it around. Flip after 3-4 minutes. Once golden brown on both sides, roll into cone shape and cool on wire rack. I cooled mine in coffee cups. Lots more details at the site.

Doing school again

We've been doing school all week, and the munchkins have loved it. Here they are doing arts and crafts, aka "playdough".

My Mom found an old disused preschool curriculum, and passed it on to me. I've been copying pages out of it and letting the munchkins color them. They're Bible stories told very simply, with worksheets to write the letter A or the letter B and so on. And a number, too.

It's a bit over Holly's head, but she can color the pictures while Alex and I count pencils for 'math' and trace letters and numbers. Holly does get in on the alphabet song and saying the sounds the letters make. And Claire is very cooperative. She loves to sit there and look at everything.

Then we read books out loud until the baby gets fussy. Then we have lunch and naptime. It's a nice routine.

I'm ready for this hot weather to be over, though. I feel like such a pansy, because this time last year it was 110, and this week it's just barely breaking 100. But heat is heat and I'm tired of it. Unfortunately, it'll be hot until mid-September.

Munchkins at work

I walked into the bedroom the other day, and found this:

My industrious munchkins had cleared off the bookcase shelves where I store their toys, and had put their sleeping bags on the shelves to make bunk beds. They were extremely proud of themselves, so I had to get a picture.

And here is their little sister, playing with her feet.

She can now roll over as quick as you please, and she's working on scootching across the floor to target toys. Crawling is not far away.

Writing style

A friend recently pointed me to http://www.speculativefaith.com/. It's a writing blog/resource for writers of Christian science fiction and fantasy. I've spent a merry couple of days reading articles on there. It's great to read articles by people who are actively writing and struggling with how to present the Gospel (or whether to omit it) in fiction.

But one topic made me squawk in outrage. (There's been several, but this one took the cake.) There was Good vs. Mediocre and Another look at Good vs. Mediocre. I was curious to see someone address the commonest problem with Christian fiction, that being its mediocrity.

The first article is basically summed up in this paragraph:

"All this to explain how I got to today’s topic. In the end, I found myself asking, Is one person’s good book another person’s mediocre fare? And if so, is there in reality a standard of art writers should be aiming for and readers should be looking to support?"

And the following comment on said article:

The more and more I find out about the writing world, the more I realize I do not care as much about style and artistry as much as I care about a really good story. I will forgive an author of almost anything if they hook me.

I violently disagree. All stories being equal, compare the writing of someone like Dickens to someone like Stephanie Meyer. Assuming their stories were equally good, and judging only by their writing styles, could anyone say that one is better than the other?

Have you ever tried to subject your brain to the tripe that is The Kingdoms and the Elves of the Reaches by Robert Staneck? Go to Amazon, click the View Inside link, and read the first paragraph. Aloud. And try not to vomit on your keyboard.

I'm sorry, but if a person's storytelling ability is hampered by lousy prose, passive verbs, clunky pacing, and boring characters, I'm not going to be able to see the story. If the story is even worth the anguish.

Ever read Eregon? The whole story is just a long experiment to see how many authors you can identify that he's ripping off (Tolkien, Star Wars, and Pern, mostly).

After scrolling through the Christian fiction section on Speculative Faith's site, I remembered why I don't bother with Christian fantasy. Not only is it derivative, most of it is poorly written. Don't these people ever study how to write invisibly?

If today's readers can't tell the difference between something that is well written and something that is poorly written, then man, they get what they deserve. :-p

Housesitting

We house-sat for my parents over the weekend. I only managed to get a few pictures when everyone was down for naps.

Here's Alex in his sleeping bag.

The dollhouse where the munchkins spent half their time. (It has an awesome amount of accessories. Even I played with it a little.)

The kitties, where they spent the other half of their time.

Also, this was my observation last year about August:

August is the cruelest month.

As my mom mentioned in her blog, February is supposedly the cruelest month. But February has holidays to break it up, and there's nothing in August.

Also, we woke up this morning to find that it was cool and breezy, about 70 degrees. My husband went for a walk and said that it was almost chilly.

August always does this. It cools off and gives one hope for fall, and a glimpse of the gloriousness of cooler weather. And then it slams you with 110 degrees and humidity and thunderstorms until mid-September.

February's got nothing on August.

Dancing

Evening at our house. I put on the Newsboys and everybody bursts into dance.

Claire dances by kicking her feet and looking surprised.

The other two turn in circles.

Blurry circles.

Until they decide to exit, stage left.

Ice milk: poor man's ice cream

Still-mixed ice milk is like poor man's ice cream. Or maybe lazy man's ice cream.

This is my bowlful of frozen ice milk. Here's how you make it:

4 cups milk
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

OR

4 cups milk
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4th tsp salt

(Tastes great and has less sugar!)

Stir together until sugar is dissolved. Pour into baking pan (9x13 works well) and place in freezer. Beat with hand mixer every 40 minutes for 2 1/2 hours until frozen. The smoother you beat it, the finer the ice crystals and the smoother the ice cream.

I put mine in the freezer and then took a 2 hour nap, so it was mostly frozen by the time I got back to it. I grimly attacked it with my hand mixer and splattered it all over the kitchen before transferring it to a bowl. But it came out fluffy enough. Kind of coarse, like a slushy. But my husband and kids like it, and it was fast.

Also:

Caterpillar arms.

Kitties

We visited Mom's yesterday for a while, and the munchkins got to pet kittens.

They're both obsessed with cats right now. As I write this, they're outside, feverishly searching for the neighborhood strays.

Munchkin antics

Three munchkins, posing for the camera.

The baby, happily munching a string that I then confiscated.

One of the local stray cats had kittens a month or so ago. Her kitties are now semi-teenager kittens, and she has two left. Anyway, this afternoon, Holly appeared at the front door, holding one of those kittens firmly by the head and front legs. She was determined that we were going to keep this kitten. I took it from her and took it back to its mother, and both Holly and Alex were very sad.

I would have taken a picture, but I was so worried that she was strangling the kitten that I didn't think of it until the kitty was freed.

Oh well. Someday, munchkins. Someday we'll be able to have a kitty.

Wednesday Chats

Patrice has changed the name of her Wednesday weight-loss meme. Now it's just a fun chatty one, and what the heck, I need to write something in August. :-)

What season was your wedding? If you aren't married, the what season is your birthday?

Summer! I got married in June because we couldn't wait until September. My poor mom. My brother got married in May, so she had two weddings just a few weeks apart.

What names did you call your grandparents?(ie- grandma, granny, gran, grammie)

My grandparents were just grandma (name) and grandpa (name), but my great grandparents were Mema and Papa.

What's your favorite smell that comes from your oven?

There's lots. The smell of baking bread, or of barbecue chicken, or cookies, or banana bread.

If you eat eggs- scrambled, fried, over easy, sunny side up, or other?

Fried, scrambled, and omelets mostly. I'd like to try eggs Benedict someday, but it kind of creeps me out. That's the kind where you break the egg into the boiling water, right?

What's the tidiest room in your house? What's the messiest?

This is a 1-bedroom apartment. It's usually all messy in some form or another. The tidiest space is usually the kitchen, because that's my workspace and munchkins have less access to my counter tops.

Have an orb spider that my ornery camera actually focused on!