Great Aunt Lil's Coffee Cake

 

Preheat oven to 350

You will need/ I use -

small bowl, larger bowl, sifter, measuring spoons, pastry blender, 2 cup measuring cup, spatula

ingredients - flour, sugar, baking powder, butter, eggs, milk, cinnamon 

In the large bowl, sift together 2 cups flour

                                                1 1/2 cups sugar

                                                2 tsp baking powder

Then use the pastry blender to work in a cube (1/2 cup) of butter. This method creates the texture of the cake.

When the buttery pieces are pea size or a bit smaller, remove 2/3 cup and add cinnamon 1-2 tsp to taste, Just stir it in. This is the topping you will add later.

In the 2 cup measuring cup, pour 2/3 cup milk, then add 2 eggs and beat with a fork until well blended. Add to dry ingredients.

Spoon mix only until blended, then pour into 9x9 or 9x13 cake pan. 9x9 is deeper and takes about 10-15 min longer to cook.

Sprinkle cinnamon mix on top and pop into oven.

Cook 30 to 45 min (ish) You can tell when it's almost done. The cinnamon smell will permeate the room! Test with toothpick or tap center to see if it springs back.

New Participant in the Online Retail Universe

Healthy Planet Productions - I like the focus!

Classic Song

I don't recall ever seeing the Elvis movie Blue Hawaii nor do I recall hearing this version of the song, Can't Help Falling In Love With You. I have heard this version.

I think this cover is my favorite version.

Programming Explained

Comedic truths anyone?

Pork Loin

First time cooking a pork loin. Maybe the first time I have ever cooked 10 pounds of meat at once. I am pleased with the results. Surprised by how quickly it cooked. Hopefully it remains moist under foil until the guests arrive.

I didn't follow a recipe, I borrowed from this one for the rub and this one for the high heat/low heat thing.

Rub:

• 1/4 cup garlic powder
• 1/4 cup onion powder
• 1/4 cup chile powder
• 1/4 cup salt
• 1/4 cup black pepper
• 1/4 cup paprika
• 1/2 cup brown sugar

Directions:

1. Preheat oven, 450
2. Put rub ingredients in a bowl, mix.
3. In an easy place to clean, spread oil over the loin.
4. Rub in the rub.
5. Place on roasting tray fat side up.
6. Place in oven and cook for 10 minutes at 450, reduce temperature to 250 until cooked.

This between 9 and 10 pounder took 180 minutes to hit 160 internally after that. I didn't check at all, just got lucky when the timer went off. I'd probably use less paprika next time, and try the white pepper recommended in the recipe.

Evers

Just before reading this, I noticed that Bill Evers' old house at 704-706 N Irwin is now FNMA owned and listed. I suspected this guy was behind both the "Weary of Wery" and "Zima has a love child" smear campaigns in recent years. It also seems to me he was instrumental in helping Olde North Neighborhood Association along toward inactive status at one point. Definitely an interesting guy to have as a constituent. He didn't seem so civic minded but he and his wife always voted.

Wishes and Hopes

It has been many years since I've spoken to my to my former colleague. From my side, Kathleen and I are social network friends because she is a talented photographer and is kind enough to share the product of her skills with her connections. What she gets from this relationship I have no idea-- I'm muted on her end for all I know. One day you actually log in to social networking and life happens to someone, gets shared and you trip over it.

Kathleen, the meditation from your aunt is better than any words I can find.

May baby Hana feel safe and protected.
May baby Hana feel loved and held in gentle kindness.
May Hana be healthy, strong, and whole.
May Hana be free from suffering.
May Hana grow in joy and peace with her family.

May Kathleen and Paul be safe.
May Kathleen and Paul be surrounded by love, hope, and strength.
May Kathleen and Paul be free from suffering.
May Kathleen, Paul and Hana grow in joy and peace as a family.

Best wishes from a long ways away from someone you knew a long time ago.

UK Trip Litmus Test!

Last presidential election, Mitt Romney had a bit of a rough trip to the U.K.

Have you noticed how many of the Republican hopefuls have made trips to the U.K. this go round? So far, Bobby Jindal, Chris Christie, and Scott Walker have all gone.

It has gone so poorly that this article suggests then Senator Obama basically set them up for failure by having a successful trip abroad while running for the presidency.

I have a different thought. I think major Republican financiers-- you know, the ones who aren't allowed to coordinate with the candidates or campaigns-- have requested that serious candidates undertake these trips to figure out who to back. Given how poorly these trips have gone, I don't see any other reason that would motivate other candidates to keep trying.

Squeaky Wheel or Barking Dog?

The old saying goes, "The squeaky wheel gets the grease." I like better this concept Maynard Webb introduces, "Don't feed the barking dogs."

Fortuitous and/or apropos? Time will tell, but I predict yes to both.

Decoy Story

C'mon people. They had everyone talking about the "One Wisconsin" wording and now everyone is being smug for winning the push back. No one has their eye on the ball. IT'S A FREAKING DECOY. I think the whole debacle was intentionally executed to keep attention from THE REAL STORY: the 150M/yr in cuts from the already tight budget of an organization that no longer has reserves.

This seems especially brutal since most employees about undergo lay off just got a $4000 compensation cut just a few years ago. It is my understanding that prior to the cuts our UW System employees were already compensated lower than their peers from other states.

I worry about how much damage this will do to our UW System and, by extension, the state.

Totally irrelevant, but ironic. This from a guy who didn't graduate from college.

Three Childrens!?

"One reason for having three kids is so that you can stop talking about having three kids." Jennifer Eyre White - havingthreekids.com

Funny stuff. Yes, definitely funny, but definitely scary too.

Jennifer also wrote a review of The Three-Martini Playdate: A Practical Guide to Happy Parenting that makes it sound pretty darn funny. Though, I wonder if the book will live up to the review.

Book Review: ...Search for Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl

This book is an odd combination of two halves. A first hand account of Nazi death camps from Frankl's perspective as a prisoner in the first half followed by Logotherapy in a nutshell.

The first half is heavy stuff as the reader is shown example after example of the brutality and hardship.

Some of Frankl's assertions especially some details around Logotherapy don't ring true to me. But the core propositions definitely resonated with me. For example, one quote that stood out to me is, "Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue." Frankl asserts a person chasing happiness wont find it. A person who has a purposes and is pursuing that end, or at least surviving hardship now to pursue it later, can achieve happiness. Someone without purpose, might try to fill their existential void with power, money or gratuitous sex. What that all sounds like short term fun, I'll take a life with actual meaning for 100, Alex.

Yes, thanks to this book I actually now know what existential means. Subject matter aside, you can tell that Frankl isn't a native English speaker. Parts are fascinating, but parts were an effort to focus through. Some of that is subject matter, some is phrasing. Frankly, I'm not sure if this book was edited or not. From a subject matter point of view, I seriously wonder how the Logotherapy in a nutshell part of the book would read through the eyes of a modern day mental health professional. How much ever became accepted? How much of that has stood the test of time?

The version I read is 165 pages including addendum by Frankl and has a forward and afterword both by other authors.

No Pope!

The pope is coming to the United States and some folks hoped his trip would include a stop in our neighborhood. I commented on the effort in a prior post.

It is interesting to see the current bishop express disappointment. This guy is is what I've come to tag in my head as, "Benedictine" or, "Team Benedict". To me, that means prioritizing liturgical enforcement, inflexible judgment and politics over empathy and compassion. He plays the media game fairly well but I think he's probably happy Papa F isn't passing through. Off the top of my head...

• Press release against someone coming to speak at a college on a topic where everyone with sense should agree.
• Churches financially participating in WISDOM forbidden.
• And why is it, exactly, that Father Guy Blair is no longer in town, Bishop? I didn't personally know him but remember his passionate advocacy on behalf of the homeless very well. I was on the receiving end of it often enough.

And that's just what I know about as someone who does not pay attention to he local diocese. I can't help but wonder if Francis would've spanked Ricken on the way through...

Threenager indeed.

So it's not just my three year old!

1. You live in constant fear of how to cut the shape of their sandwich or toast. Do they want triangles today, rectangles, squares? And when they do tell you, they change their mind right after you cut it.
2. They say things like (with hands firmly placed on hips), "I don't want to clean up, I want to do what I want to do!"
3. You go through three or more wardrobe changes a day. Please just pick a princess already!
4. Your child goes boneless the second you remind them that a transition is coming, especially when they are asked to stop playing. By the way, when was this ability given to children? You know, lay limp and double your body weight so mom can't move you. It's a talent reminiscent of a possum playing dead...
5. They run away from you when it's time to get dressed, or leave a play place, or do anything they deem unnecessary. In fact running away from you is their favorite activity. (Cardio workout?)
6. To nap or not to nap, that is the question. A threenager's answer will always be emphatically "NO!" Unless of course it's time for school, and they crawl into bed because they're "tired."
7. They want three of everything because they are three.
8. At red lights they yell, "Go... GOOO!" Threenagers do not possess patience.
9. peaking of the car, you have to leave 10 minutes earlier so they can buckle their own car seat by their "OWN SELF!"
10. You realize they'll be a great trial lawyer one day when they've just negotiated their way out of a timeout.

Bad CEOs, bad boards, bad investors, or what?

As I read this article about bad CEOs I noted a repeating theme of the CEO being let go "too late" to save the company.

I have no reason to doubt the CEO quality level assertion. What I don't understand is where were the boards of directors? If a CEO is driving a company off the rails, toward a cliff for years and years, one would hope the board-- even one hand picked by the CEO-- would step up and do something about it.

Where were these board members? Shouldn't they have acted sooner to save these companies? Did they implicitly endorse the behaviours and actions of the CEO by not providing boundaries or feedback on direction?

Of course, then you have the other end of the spectrum where activist investors who push their own short term perspective. This guy might be good for shareholder ROI but he probably terrible for users and employees. Dude, I get that you want an ROI but there are people behind those numbers in your ROI spreadsheets. If an activist investor like this elects a board that then shreds the company, I guess then it's the fault of the owners who elected the board in the first place, no?