Becca’s World

Found this recipe online and thought I’d share. It comes from Joan and here’s the original link.

Ingredients

1 stick (4 ounces) butter, melted
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons granulated sugar, divided
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 to 4 ripe peaches, peeled, pitted, thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Preparation

Heat oven to 375°. Pour melted butter into a 2-quart baking dish (11×7 or 8-inch square). In a mixing bowl, combine 1 cup of the sugar, the flour, baking powder, and salt; stir to blend. Stir in the milk and vanilla until blended. Pour the batter over the melted butter. Toss the peaches with the remaining 3 tablespoons of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon. Arrange the peach slices over the batter. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean. The top will be browned and the cake will begin to pull away from the sides of the pan. Serve warm with a little heavy cream, whipped topping, or a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Here’s how mine turned out. I made two at the same time but only had one square pan. Looks great in a pie dish and tastes delicious!

I learned to play bocce today. Unless I’m missing a bunch of rules, it’s not that complicated. The challenge is that I need to learn the strength required for a particular shot. Most of the time, I threw too hard, which I didn’t expect - thought I’d be short of the target, not long.

Wonder if I’d have the same struggle with curling. Never actually played that one, only watched it. I do know bocce seems like the summer version of curling, though they originate from totally different countries.

I’ve never been intensely motivated to participate in sport, but instead prefer to be a spectator. I like to cheer people on and I’m often amazed by their skills and determination. And I’ll admit that I go a bit crazy when the Olympic Games occur. I soak up as much of the competitions that I can.

Someone told me today that sporting events like the Olympics seem trivial in the wake of the people fighting disease and poverty in this area. In this person’s opinion, they have no real place in our lives.

Although I understand that I’m not interacting with those folks on a day-to-day basis and therefore seeing the desperation firsthand, I can’t agree with the statement.

Sport is often what keeps people fighting. One example is a weightlifter from Germany who fought hard for a gold medal in Beijing to honour his dead wife. I’m sure that training for the Games allowed him to deal with his grief in a healthy way instead of being consumed by it and unable to go on with life.

I’m not saying the salaries of professional athletes make sense to me - why are so many millions of dollars being spent on them when the Canadian health care system and our military suffer for money? At the same time, if nothing were spent on sport, we’d be missing an important part of our culture.

The same can be said of the TV and movie industry, which was also dismissed in the same conversation. We don’t need to be obsessing over the details of a movie star’s life, but the works that are produced generally have a beneficial effect on people.

It may sound like I’m oversimplifying the matter, but I think sports and entertainment are good for the soul. I’m not ashamed of the enjoyment I get from following the Olympics or watching a good movie.

Even though the Summer Fun Contest at 5 Minutes for Mom isn’t open to Canadian residents, I wanted to make sure the site gets a mention. And this would have been my entry:

I never tag folks for these things, but if you’re interested in giving your thoughts, just copy and paste.

“The Big Read” reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books on the list. I’ve read 34!

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (Read out of school and hated.)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (Read some of the plays and sonnets, but not all.)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (Duplicate, since the entire series is mentioned above.)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (Saw the movie.)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (Not all the way through, just as short kids’ books.)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

For more cool cartoons, check out Savage Chickens.

Nope, I haven’t started thinking about Christmas shopping. Yet.

I don’t know the statistics on babies with milk “sensitivities,” but as I find products that won’t cause an allergic reaction, I’ll post them here in case anyone is looking. Here’s what I have so far:

Soy formula - If you’re using formula, you can either look for lactose-free or soy. Some websites state that lactose-free is not enough for milk allergies because it still contains milk itself, but is partially broken down for easier digestion. I suppose parents will face the decision of trying lactose-free first or just skipping to soy if they are convinced that milk is the problem. Doctors usually recommend that as little change as possible should be made in brand and type of formula, so the severity of the baby’s symptoms should probably be the parents’ guide for this dilemma.

Most formulas (or is it formulae?) are designed to be used only until the one-year mark, when babies can digest cow’s milk. There may be a soy formula that can be used beyond this age, but my plan so far is to switch to one of the brands of soy milk available for adults. I’ll definitely research prior to this point. Also, not all babies will become adults who can’t drink cow’s milk, so there will be a point where we attempt to introduce that into our child’s diet.

Sidenote: I can’t comment personally on eliminating dairy while continuing to breastfeed, but I would assume that the woman should be careful not to lose all calcium intake. As always, do your research before making changes - many women online will share their experiences to help others, and being informed when you meet with your doctor should make the visit more effective.

Cream of Wheat - Untested at this point, though I should have an answer soon. The ingredients on the label don’t mention milk products, so this should be a safe alternative to baby cereals, which are either made with milk powder or contain traces of milk due to the processing equipment.

Arrowroot biscuits - Some baby biscuits contain milk ingredients, so read labels carefully. Arrowroot appears to be milk-free.

Remember that the current warning is that so-called “teething biscuits” could break off in pieces too large for a baby, so supervision is required. What I’ve seen with Arrowroot is that sucking on the biscuit gradually “melts” it away. Still, there is advice on the label about supervision, just in case.

And that’s all I have so far!

How do you follow three excellent suspense novels? If you’re Brandilyn Collins, you kick things up a few notches and release Amber Morn.

Action-filled from the opening pages, the final installment of the Kanner Lake Series grabs the reader and just won’t let go. This is the ultimate example of a book you don’t want to put down, and it’s a blast to read.

Time is flying, I swear it! Here’s my babe at half-a-year old.

For more cool cartoons, check out Savage Chickens.

Find more cool cartoons check out Savage Chickens.

For more cool cartoons, check out Savage Chickens.

Thanks for all the stories from your childhood, the books and your art. (Even gruff old men can make beautiful things with their talented hands.) You made delicious pizza and provided great company for the many lunches on our weekend visits.

I hope you know how much you were loved. The holidays won’t be the same without you. I’ll miss you more than I want to admit to myself.

Rest in peace, Ernie.