Orange Dessert

I like recipe blogs almost as much as I like quilt blogs, so I thought I might try to throw in some recipes every so often. I made this dish today which goes by the very unimaginative name of "Orange Dessert." I usually make it in one big dish, but two smaller ones fit in my freezer better. And as it turned out, it was a sort of serendipity that I made it in two dishes. Dave decided this morning to go visit a neighbor who cares for her husband who has Alzheimer's (who happens to be a retired pastor in our conference) and as he was leaving I handed him one of these to take with him. He also took her some Mother's Day flowers. He can be a pretty good guy when he wants to!

I got this recipe from Southern Living magazine a few years ago, so you know it's going to be good. I make it as low fat and low sugar as I can, as you will see.

Orange Dessert

1/2 cup butter or margarine, melted
60 Ritz crackers, crushed (I use the low sodium ones)
1/4 cup sugar (I use Splenda)
1 (14-oz) can Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk (I use the fat-free Eagle Brand)
1 6-oz can frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed
1 8-oz container Cool Whip, thawed (I use sugar-free)
2 11-oz cans mandarin oranges, drained (I use the no-sugar-added ones)

Combine first three ingredients. Set aside 3/4 cup. Press remaining crumb mixture into a 13x9x2 baking dish and set aside.

Combine Eagle Brand and orange juice. Fold in Cool Whip and oranges. Spoon mixture over crust and sprinkle with reserved crumb mixture. Cover and freeze until firm.

I set it out a little while before I serve it. Just long enough so that the mandarin oranges thaw a little, otherwise they're like chunks of orange ice.

Enjoy!

Southern Stars top is done!

Design wall - a bit late this week

I took my own advice, sort of. After making a total of 450 3-inch four-patches, I decided to put them aside and finish the last two blocks of the Southern Stars quilt. I was so close to getting the next to the last block finished Monday morning in time to post at Judy's blog, but had sewn two of the half square triangles in backwards! I hate unsewing. I took the block to work with me and unsewed during my lunch hour.


And here's the very last block, ready to be put together. Then it's on to the sashing.

Anyone watching the royal wedding Friday? We plan to get up early to watch and make "wedding waffles" for breakfast.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the fabric on the ironing board is for the border of the quilt.

Happy Easter!

What was Easter like when you were a child? I remember every woman and girl always had a new Easter dress, and usually hat, shoes and purse to go with it. I remember the excitement of hunting the Easter eggs first thing in the morning. If it was raining, the Easter Bunny hid them in the living room. My Easter "basket" was usually a new sand pail, for playing in my sandbox, one of my favorite activities. I would love to have one or two of those pails now! I think I need to check out eBay and see if I can find any.

Then came Sunday School, where we'd do a crafty gift for our parents like a new Bible bookmark, or something. My mom's Bible was stuffed with those bookmarks - typically a length of satin ribbon with a sticker at the top. Then home to family and a feast. My grandmother would bring me a shoebox full of flower transplants from her flower beds. To this day, the smell of stock takes me instantly to my grandmother's side.

My mom was born in 1915, and her childhood Easter egg experience was a bit different than the standard egg hunt. On the day before Easter each child (with my grandmother watching closely so she could "direct" the Easter Bunny later) found a secluded spot near the house and built a "nest" with leaves, twigs, grass, etc. Then on Easter morning they would go to their nests and find the colored eggs left by the Easter Bunny in the nest. Seems like this would confuse little ones - did the bunny lay the eggs? Did he bring a hen friend along? Oh well, these were country kids, they probably knew exactly where eggs came from from an early age.

Being a clergy family, my husband has always been out the door by 6 a.m. on Sunday (or earlier) for the sunrise service at church. We had to be creative if he was going to experience the fun of watching our daughter hunt Easter eggs. For the first couple of years we had Grace convinced that the Easter Bunny came to our house on Saturday evening (he has to start somewhere, right?). We'd also have our big meal then. If you don't know, Easter, and all of Holy Week, are exhausting for church staff. Joyful and emotional and stressful, but most of all exhausting.

When she was in about the 2nd grade, we were getting her Easter basket ready for the next day when Grace wrote a note for the Easter Bunny. At the end of the note she drew an "x" and line and wrote, "Sign here if you are real." So after she went to bed I sort of messily signed "Hippity" with my left hand. When she woke up the next morning she looked at the note and said, "Just what I thought, Dad's handwriting."

Hope you have a wonderful Easter Sunday, confident of God's sacrifice for you.

On my design wall

Hello again! I can't believe I've gone so long without posting. Life is just so daily, as Mary Engelbreit says! I'm hoping to get back into the swing of things. Nothing major happened in these last few months. Work has been tough, but it always is. We're dealing with the same budget cuts every one else is. But as my boss (the college president) says, we can't control what the economy and the state government are doing, we can only control how we react to our circumstances. And one of my best ways to deal with stress is to sew!! (The others are pray and cook!)

And on that note, here is my design wall today. There are 10 blocks of Southern Stars by Pacific Patchwork and a bunch of double four-patches in a setting I love from a book called Triangle-Free Quilts by Judy Hopkins. Las Colchas did the Southern Stars as a bom a couple of years ago. (Hi Francine!). I started making the double four-patches a couple of weeks ago when I had a bunch of leftover 1 1/2 inch brown and beige blocks and strip sets from my sister's choice quilt. I needed a fairly mindless activity to occupy my hands and free my brain from too much junk, so I just kept making and making and making 3-inch four-patches. I thought I'd use up all my brown and beige fabric, then hunt for a block that incorporated the four patches and then I remembered the Judy Hopkins quilt. I did buy some new fabric for the bigger squares in the four patches. My small four patches are so incredibly scrappy I wanted some consistency in the large ones.

Please don't point out that in much less than the time it took to make the 200 3-inch four-patches I've made so far I could easily have made the other two Southern Stars blocks and put them together and had a finished top to show for it! That makes way too much sense!

Two great things that are happening this week: it's Sylvester's day to clean my house today (he comes every other Monday) and it's our second four-day work week in a row! So today is really my Tuesday! And I'm really busy at work, so time will fly by.

Time for Bible study/devotion with my pastor spouse. We try for every morning over coffee. It doesn't always work out, but most of the time it does.

Happy New Year's Eve

It is definitely not snowing here in South Texas! We've had some rain this week, but I think it got up to the mid 70s yesterday. Not really wintry weather. We may be in for some real winter next week, I understand. It's very rare here to get anything too cold. I have one winter coat which I sometimes go a year without wearing. I miss snow. I went to college in Lubbock, where we could count on several snow events each winter - often five or more inches at a time. We lived in Birmingham, Alabama, for three years and I was surprised at how much snow we saw there. The first year we lived there it even snowed on Halloween! Even in the Dallas area where we have lived most of our marriage we typically had a much colder winter than here, just 300 miles south. It was mostly ice and sleet, though, not so much snow.

It's New Year's Eve. I'm thinking about resolutions for 2011. I generally make a few New Year's resolutions. Some I keep, some (most?) I don't. I have heard that when making resolutions you should not make general statements like "lose weight" or "get organized." You should be specific and have an action plan - like "join Weight Watchers" or "lose five lbs. per month by cutting carbs." Or, "spend one hour every Friday morning cleaning desk."

This year I'm thinking about changing up my resolution routine a bit. I'm thinking instead of year-long resolutions, I'm going to set monthly goals. That way, I won't overload myself with a lot of impossible-to-achieve plans, most of which I'll forget in a few weeks. I'm going to take a short-range approach to self-improvement and I'm hopeful I'll see some long-term results.

So...for January, 2011, I want to work on these goals:

1. Finish the restoration of our friend's antique Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt. I'm embarrassed to think about how long I've procrastinated on this project, but, can I say, it's boring! I need to finish it and I plan to this month. I can spend an hour every morning before work (the benefit of being an early riser) and several hours on each weekend. I should be able to knock it out if I do that and then I can work on my own projects guilt-free.

2. Lose 10 lbs. by limiting carbs and not eating between meals. Of course, I have many more than 10 lbs. to lose! But I'm thinking seeing 10 lbs. fall off will be a great motivator for the rest of the year. This is going to be tough. I work in an office where breakfast tacos, doughnuts, candy and cakes are plentiful, not to mention the numerous luncheons and receptions that are my job to plan and organize which involve lots of food!

3. Be faithful to a daily devotional time. Since I'm not teaching or taking a formal Bible study right now, it's so easy to let myself fall away from the Word. I have so many good resources right at my fingertips (I have a pastor husband, for goodness sake!), I have no excuse not to. Even if it's just the Upper Room devotional for the day, at least I can center my day around what my day is supposed to be centered around!

Okay - three specific goals are a good start. After all, I have a full-time (and then some) job, husband, house, child (mostly grown, but still), dog, cats, laundry, cooking, cleaning (not too much of that thanks to Juliette and Sylvester every other Monday - something I'm soooo thankful for), church, choir, prayer life, etc. If I can achieve these three, I'll be quite satisfied and ready to add a few more in February!

More cookies to share

Tomorrow is the last day - the Twelve Days of Cookies are history for another year. I've been thinking about making this an annual event. People have certainly enjoyed them at the college. People I haven't seen all year just "happen" to drop by. I've seen a lot of smiles. One of our deans told me he's just heard of a new tradition - the Twelve Days of Martin Luther King's Birthday, followed by the Twelve Days of Valentine's Day. It's been really fun. These are raspberry cake bars and the ones above are turtle graham bars. I haven't taken pictures of all of them.

I haven't done any sewing in forever. I developed optic neuritis last year. It went away after a few months, but recently I developed it in the other eye, which is my much stronger eye. Oy. I've gotten to the age where something is either falling apart on me, my house, or my spouse!

Anyway, I hope to get back to the machine soon. Although it's in my stronger eye, it's a much milder case than last year. That's a blessing.

Glad to be nearly out for the holiday. We've had a rough semester and will enjoy the time off.