laurushka.org/blog

Here they are!
2011′s Lilia and the Trees:

And the previous years!

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

For reference…
2010 post
2009 post
2008 post

Sorry, been neglecting the blog. I’ll have to do something about that some day soon.
I’m posting this recipe here so I can have easy access to it.
From here:

http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/easy_shepherds_pie/

Easy Shepherd’s Pie Recipe
* Prep time: 10 minutes
* Cook time: 50 minutes

Ingredients

* 1 1/2 lbs ground round beef
* 1 onion chopped
* 1-2 cups vegetables – chopped carrots, corn, peas
* 1 1/2 – 2 lbs potatoes (3 big ones)
* 8 tablespoons butter (1 stick)
* 1/2 cup beef broth
* 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
* Salt, pepper, other seasonings of choice

Method

1 Peel and quarter potatoes, boil in salted water until tender (about 20 minutes).

2 While the potatoes are cooking, melt 4 Tablespoons butter (1/2 a stick) in large frying pan.

3 Sauté onions in butter until tender over medium heat (10 mins). If you are adding vegetables, add them according to cooking time. Put any carrots in with the onions. Add corn or peas either at the end of the cooking of the onions, or after the meat has initially cooked.

4 Add ground beef and sauté until no longer pink. Add salt and pepper. Add worcesterchire sauce. Add half a cup of beef broth and cook, uncovered, over low heat for 10 minutes, adding more beef broth as necessary to keep moist.

5 Mash potatoes in bowl with remainder of butter, season to taste.

6 Place beef and onions in baking dish. Distribute mashed potatoes on top. Rough up with a fork so that there are peaks that will brown nicely. You can use the fork to make some designs in the potatoes as well.

7 Cook in 400 degree oven until bubbling and brown (about 30 minutes). Broil for last few minutes if necessary to brown.

Yield: Serves four.

Things I do differently: I usually use Ground Turkey and Chicken or Veggie Broth. I also sometimes use leftover mashed potatoes, if I’ve made mashed potatoes recently. I also use Trader Joe’s Organic Foursome frozen veggie mix, but I add that to cut veggies. I also never have Worcestershire sauce so I don’t use that. Sometimes I’ll add a little soy sauce or something. And of course, I eat most everything with Crystal Hot Sauce, so I just add that for flavor at the end.

I’ve been carrying around a 6-inch 78 rpm record that belonged to my mother for years. I thought it was a message recorded by my grandfather during World War II and shipped to my mother. I have a collection of letters/postcards he sent to her from the war, and I thought this was part of that collection. Our turntables don’t play 78 rpm, so I never listened to it.
Joe has been converting LPs to MP3, and he discovered that he could convert a 78 rpm playing at 45 rpm with some cool software called Audacity.

It turns out it isn’t my grandfather at all. I don’t recognize her voice, but this must be my mother. Joe thinks she sounds just like my sister Maria. What do you think?
Hershey Park Message
The envelope is not addressed, but is pre-printed: Don’t Write– Record it on the “Voice-O-Graph”.

I’m still feeling a little achy from the Fifth Disease. I had a follow-up appointment with my doctor, and he brushed off the tiredness as “normal” tiredness, and didn’t seem concerned with my aches and pains. I was a little disappointed, but I really don’t want to do any treatments for it– from what I saw on the fifth disease message board, it looks like you could try taking prednisone (orally) or get cortisone shots. I don’t want to do either of those. The weather was very humid and hot the other week, and it was very bad for me, but since fall is coming, I have hope that the change in weather will help me get over this soon.

We watched Darby O’Gill and the Little People the other night (Joe has been telling Lilia stories about “wee people”). I then looked up the Wikipedia entry for it, and read about the actors. According to Wikipedia, the lead actress, Janet Munro, died at age 38 (!), of “myocarditis.” The entry for myocarditis says “Myocarditis is most often due to infection by common viruses, such as parvovirus B19“! The Fifth Disease virus! Woah.

So, even if the arthritis symptoms last as long as nine years (“Chronic joint pain has been known to last up to nine years.“), at least the infection didn’t go to my heart. Geez.

I saw this story on NPR.com about The Top Five Worries of Parents.

Apparently, according to a survey, parents are worrying about the wrong things. They worry about:
1. Kidnapping
2. School snipers
3. Terrorists
4. Dangerous strangers
5. Drugs

But they should be worried about:
1. Car accidents
2. Homicide (usually committed by a person who knows the child, not a stranger)
3. Abuse
4. Suicide
5. Drowning

Now, what struck me about this article is that from the beginning of the article, it wasn’t clear what kind of worrying they meant. My parenting worries don’t generally involve bodily harm or death. I have other worries to keep me occupied from things I don’t have control over, like terrorists or school snipers. I came up with my own list of worries, and only two involve bodily harm:

1. Am I causing psychological damage by being a bad parent?
2. Will she be screwed up if she is an only child?
3. Getting hit by a car when she runs into the street because I didn’t teach her to listen to the word Stop or No.
4. Not finding a decent elementary school
5. Serious illness

And about the list of things we parents should be worried about… I had a car seat check just the other week because I was unsure I had reinstalled the car seat properly. I had. And I really don’t know what to say about the rest.