Joker Joe or "Joe-ker"

Saturday night was the Tri-stake Halloween dance. Joseph wanted to go as the Joker from the Dark Knight. Since it was inappropriate to dress as a nurse the way the Joker did in the movie, Joseph decided to dress in scrubs that were gender appropriate. This is what he looked like before he left for the dance. I hope he did not scare away the girls.

Oil Lamps

In Mom’s seminary class, for the lesson on Matthew 25, the students made clay oil lamps a couple of weeks in advance. For the lesson they could put oil in them and light them in the parking lot to see what it would be like to use an oil lamp the way they would have used them 2000 years ago. Joseph made a really cool looking lamp which you can see here. When lit at night, it actually puts out enough light to see where you are going. It burns for quite a long time, although the wind would blow it out if not careful.

This is the seminary class with their lighted lamps. Unlike the story in the parable, Mom brought extra oil - enough for everyone.

Frogs in the Pond

Several frogs have taken up residence in our pond. There is a large one (4 inch long) that spends part of his time in the bushes and part of his time in and next to the pond in the front yard. There are at least two, but I think it may be three smaller (about 2.5 to 3 inch long) frogs that spend almost all of their time in or next to the pond.

When anyone walks out the front door or approaches from the driveway, the frogs dive under the water and hide. This one did not dive but just watched me until I too close for his comfort level. He is one of the small ones.
I zoomed in with the camera to get a closer look, but he dove under a few seconds later. I think some of our fish are big enough to not get eaten by the frogs, but I do not know about how safe baby fish are. I think we may relocate the frogs to the pond on the other side of Jamestown road when it is convenient. Of course that means we have to catch then first. I'm sure Joseph can move fast enough.

Rope Swing Down

When the remnants of hurricane Ike came through here and dumped about 8 inches of rain early Sunday morning (September 14), the wind also blew pretty hard and broke a quite a few tree branches. I discovered that one of the branches that was broken in the storm was the large branch that the rope swing was tied to. It looks like rope around the branch prevented the branch from growing properly and caused it to die. It looks like it broke at the spot that the rope had been tied. This the part of the branch that is still attached to the tree.

This is a close up of the end of the branch (way zoomed in). A tripod would have been helpful in holding the camera still to reduce the blur.

This is the part that fell with the rope still tangled up in the branch.

I will cut up the branch with the chain saw and perhaps we can burn it while everyone is home for Christmas.

At least the rope did not break this time, but having the log fall on top of someone might have hurt as much, if not more than when the first rope broke about 16-17 years ago. What do you think Neil?

First Squash from the Garden

I was late in getting things planted in the garden this year, but the first squash was ready to pick yesterday (Sunday, Sept21). This is what I picked. It was quite tasty when cooked. I planted yellow and light green squash (2 hills of each), two rows of green beans and a hill of cucumbers.

This is a close up of one of the hills of yellow squash after today’s squash was picked. There should be more to eat in a day or two.

The green beans and cucumbers are loaded with blossoms, so we should have those to eat in a couple of weeks. I have a three foot high chicken wire fence around the green beans to keep the rabbits out. Sometimes I see a rabbit looking longingly at the green beans while he eats the grass and weeds. Too bad for him. If things continue to go well, we will have lots of extra green beans to make several jars of dilly beans to eat at Christmas time.

Joseph's Eagle Court of Honor

We had a court of honor for Joseph on Saturday evening. Joseph completed his eagle board of review in April, the day after his birthday. Jared Dolle in our ward and Robbie Poeppelmeier in the Florissant ward also completed their eagle boards of review this summer. We decided that we could just combine all three in to one court of honor. For part of the display of Joseph’s scouting activities over the years, we made a poster of photos of various scout activities. We noticed that there were a lot of photos that had Joseph, Jared and Robbie together on the same campout. Since they did everything together in scouts, it was appropriate that we have a combined court of honor.

There were lots of people attending. Almost all of the chairs were filled. There were at least 70 or 80 people in attendance.

Sue Hodgson made the cake. We were in charge of drinks, so we had root beer floats that were greatly enjoyed. We went through 5 quarts of ice cream and 10 liters of root beer.

The scoutmaster, Ben Fuhriman, conducted the court of honor. His father has lots of American flags and flag type decorations that were used. It looked really cool. Bishop Fred McCormack did the eagle award presentation. He did a really good job. This is all of us on the stage for the awards, including mother’s and father’s pins (no stab wounds). There were mentor pins for the scout to give to someone that was particularly influential. Joseph and Robbie both gave their mentor pins to Brother Wood. Jared Dolle gave his to Brother Liesman.

After the awards, each of the scouts spoke. Joseph did a very good job.

This is all three of them together.

Jared and Robbie turned 18 just after they completed their requirements, so Joseph is the youngest of the new eagles at 17. He already has enough merit badges for his first palm.

Go Joseph!!!

Peach Pie

Peaches have been in season for the last couple of weeks. Schnucks had Eckerts peaches for sale so I bought some. There were really good, so I bought more.

Katie asked me for the recipe for peach freezer jam, which I think is about tied with strawberry for the best freezer jam ever. I responded to Katie that the best way to make freezer jam is to buy the pectin and use the recipe that comes in the package. Thinking about peach freezer jam got my taste buds really going, so I made peach freezer jam that evening. It was really good.

Then I decided that jam was not enough, so the next night, I made a peach pie. Since the best way to eat peach pie is with vanilla ice cream on top, I made a new batch of homemade vanilla ice cream using mom’s new ice cream maker.

We have used the peach pie recipe in the Betty Crocker cookbook for years, but I did a search on the internet for peach pie to see if I could find something even better. I found the following recipe: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Peach-Pie/Detail.aspx

After reading many of the reviews, I decided to compare it to the Betty Crocker recipe before deciding how I wanted to make the pie. The recipe from Allrecipes.com listed 10 peaches while Betty Crocker called for 5 cups of sliced peaches. My peaches were big and 5 peaches resulted in 5 cups. The recipe at Allrecipes.com called for 1/3 cup flour compared to Betty Crocker’s ¼ cup and Allrecipes.com called for twice as much butter and no cinnamon and no lemon juice. I used the flour and butter amounts from Allrecipe.com and used the lemon juice amount from Betty Crocker. I omitted the cinnamon.

The Betty Crocker recipe has you mix the lemon juice, sugar, cinnamon and flour into the peach slices and then put the butter on the peach mixture. The Allrecipes.com method mixes the sugar, flour and butter into a crumbly mixture. The peaches and crumb mixture are layered in the pie shell. I took a photo of the pie just before the top crust went on.
When I put the top crust on, I did not do a very good job of sealing the edge, so juice leaked out of the edges instead of the top when it cooked. I made my typical cinnamon and sugar sprinkled pie crust strips and put them into the oven when I baked the pie. I put them in a pan under the pie but on top of the cookie sheet on the second shelf that catches the juice. I forgot about the pie crust strips and remembered them when the pie was almost done. They were a bit overcooked, but much of the peach juice had dripped on the pie crust strips. They were quite good. I used the Betty Crocker cooking method of 425 degrees for 15 minutes with foil to prevent over browning and then reducing to 350 degrees. One of the comments on the peach pie recipe at Allrecipes.com said that one way to prevent the peach pie from being too runny was to leave it in the oven for a while after turning off the heat so the juices can continue to cook and set up without overcooking the crust. I did this. Also, this recipe has a little more flour than the Betty Crocker recipe which also makes it set up well. Once the pie was cooled, it was nice and firm.

The first piece was not firm, because it was still hot. Fresh homemade ice cream cooled it down nicely. It not only looks really good in the photo, it tasted really, really, really good.

I’m not sure if there will be any left when Joseph gets home Saturday night. I might just have to make another one.