Happy Pi Day!

In honor of it being Pi Day and all I decided I should share the recipe for my grandmother's PIneapple PIe. For anyone outside my family, you should know that at our family reunions there was much jostling and jockeying for position to get in line first at the food table. Everyone knew that my grandmother always brought these pies to family functions. If you missed out on this PIe you left the reunion a very sad person. The Husby is only a marginal fan of PIneapple but he LOVES this PIe. So here goes:
6 eggs, beaten separately
3 cups of sugar (note that above I did NOT say it was a healthy PIe)
One small can of crushed PIneapple
2 Tbsp. butter
Mix all ingredients together except egg whites. Beat the egg whites until they are almost stiff, then fold into the rest of the ingredients. Pour into two unbaked pie shells and bake at 350 degrees F. Bake approximately 45 minutes. Remove from oven when the top is browned but the center is still a bit squiggly. If you overbake it, don't panic, it is still good, just a little on the dry side. And it will just give you an excuse to make them again.
My sister won a PIe baking contest with this recipe once. It's that good. For you southerners, you will recognize that this is basically a chess PIe. Sorry I don't have a photograph to share.
Happy PI Day you all.

What does it look like now?

I took this photo in the summer of 2007 only a short time before we left Kosovo. It is just the outside wall to the restaurant of our favorite little restaurant in Trstenik, Croatia. I have posted about this place before, calling it the Center of the Universe. Have you ever been to one of those places where the pull of gravity was just right? Where the light refracted in such a way that you knew you were in that one perfect place at that one perfect time. That's Trstenik for me.
I've been spending a lot of time this winter passing the grey days with photo editing. So much fun I almost (but not quite) don't want spring to come when I won't have as much time to play indoors!

Hearts and Flowers

Let's just say that a lot has happened since I last posted over a year ago. 2011 was not what anyone would call a happy year. To sum it up, it kinda sucked.
But this year shows a lot more promise already!

Here's a Great Giveaway over at The Graphics Fairy

One of my favorite all time blogs is The Graphics Fairy. Karen has a new blog about her personal life and she has posted a giveaway of $250 Best Buy gift card sponsored by BlogHer. Check it out here Seriously, I have blogged before about The Graphics Fairy. You have to see it to believe it. The best graphics ever, man. And they're FREE!

Samantha's Christmas Bird

When my granddaughter was about a year and a half old and my daughter got out the Christmas decorations that year, she came across a couple of white felt beaded birds that I had made for her a number of years before she was married. Well, my granddaughter fell upon those two birds and played with them until the feathers fell out! Something about those birds just spoke to her.
And it was the same thing the next year when my daughter unpacked all the Christmas decorations. So I started making her new ones of different colors each year and she just loves these little birds.
My mother gave me the pattern. In about 1965 she made probably a dozen of these birds and she has had them on her tree ever since. I always liked them, hence my making them for my daughter probably 20 years ago now.
This bird is the 2010 edition of Samantha's Bird. I like to think that maybe someday they will hang on her Christmas tree and maybe another little girl in the family will love them, too.

What's Christmas without cookies?

Even though I have been dieting for a few months I still feel the need to bake cookies. I asked The Husby what kind he especially wants this year and he told me he didn't care if I didn't make any other kind than frosted sugar cookies. No problem! They're my favorite, too. Weird thing about frosted sugar cookies. My own mother never made them while I was growing up. Not ever. Not that I felt deprived, mind you. She made all kinds of date bars, fudge, divinity, cream wafers, and those buttery cookies that have to go through a press before baking. What are those things called, anyway?
But sugar cookies that were rolled out, cut out, baked and frosted with various colors of icing and then maybe topped off with colored sugars, dragees and other little pieces of ornament? No. I think because she didn't make these I formed the opinion that they were somewhat inferior to all other Christmas cookies. I tasted a few over the years and they were okay, but nothing prompted me to make my own until about 20 years ago a co-worker brought some to work that his wife had made. I remember cornering him and demanding the recipe, these cookies were that good. They have been the favorite holiday cookie ever since.
So even though I am making a few other holiday goodies, these sugar cookies are front and center. I mailed my daughter some the other day, too. Usually my granddaughter and I make them together at her house but this year, thanks to me being obliged to do MY CIVIC DUTY and be available for jury duty, I'm stuck here. But Christmas Eve I'm throwing off the chains of my diet and eating sugar cookies and having some egg nog while I watch "A Christmas Story" on the 24 hour marathon on TBS. Almost heaven, I'm tellin' ya.

He's the Man

The holiday season always tends to make me a bit nostalgic and yesterday my husband and I re-visited one of our favorite themes for Christmas. We got to reminiscing about how we found out that there was no Santa Claus. I think I may have exceeded the threshold for Santa believability. It wasn't until the springtime AFTER Christmas when I was in 3rd grade that I even got a whiff that Santa might not be real. I mean, I was nine years old at that point. I still remember the punch in the gut feeling when one of my blabbermouth school chums laid this tidbit on me.
My husband said he thinks the reason I went so long believing is because I just wanted to believe. I said, no, I absolutely had never even had a doubt. My parents and my older sister had me and my younger sister and brother completely reeled in on the Santa fantasy. And we loved it. Christmas Eve night we were beside ourselves with exitement. Santa, he was The Man. I swear, the only way my parents could have worked us into a higher state of bliss would have been to have someone outside the house shake some sleighbells. That would have just sent us over the top. We would never have slept!
Last year my then five year old granddaughter had a schoolmmate trying to insert herself into the fantasy by making fun of Santa. The nerve! So I managed to eke out another year of believability for my granddaughter by explaining in a very serious tone that kids who don't believe in Santa don't get a visit from Santa. I'm pretty sure that worked.
It's such a short time that kids get to believe in something. I wish I could go back to that myself. Christmas when you're a kid...good times.