The Keeping Room: Happy Birthday, Pumpkin!

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Happy Birthday, Pumpkin!

Cuyler

Kindergarten

Cuyler

Pre-school

Cuyler

2010

6 comments:

Tess Kincaid said...: This pumpkin of yours is pretty darn cute!

Happy Birthday Cuyler!!; October 31, 2010 at 4:01 PM
Hollace said...: I love the picture of the kids in the leaf pile. Reminds me of my New England childhood, making leaf houses.; October 31, 2010 at 11:22 PM
Unknown said...: What a handsome pumpkin he turned into! Happy birthday Cuyler!; November 1, 2010 at 7:41 AM
Anonymous said...: How fun to have a birthday on Halloween! Happy Birthday Cuyler : ); November 1, 2010 at 11:48 AM
Karen at Pas Grand-Chose said...: Congratulations for producing such a lovely son! Thank you so much for visiting my blog and for your nice comments. I am delighted to find yours, so full of interest - I will definitely return, to browse back some more and keep up to date with your latest posts. I'm also a fan of Jeeves & Wooster, by the way - so much so that it took me ages to get used to Hugh Laurie with an American accent in "House"! My daughters are also big Fry fans; we watched his "In America" series and later I queued in Hatchards bookshop in Picadilly to have him sign a copy of the book, which he kindly inscribed to my daughters - he was warm and charming.Sorry, this is a long-winded way of saying how much I enjoy your blog!; November 2, 2010 at 3:00 PM
Michael said...: Handsome not so little pumpkin I see now. :)

LOVE your side bar items. thank you for those. BUT where can one sign up to follow? do you not have that? I thought I had already done that but don;t see it now.; November 14, 2010 at 10:16 PM

Here is what I often call Crumbly Gingerbread

I found the recipe on a postcard I sent home to a friend when I visited Grasmere in 1986. This is very close to the gingerbread sold at St. Oswald's church there in Grasmere. This is marvelous with your hot tea. The real secret is adding the sugar at the very last-not blending it with the margerine. I use either a fork or pastry blender to "rub" in the margarine with flour and oats. I have copied it as it appeared on the postcard and added my American interpretation of measurements for certain ingredients.

9 oz brown wheatmeal flour
(1 rounded cup wholewheat flour)
3 oz porridge oats
(1/2 cup Three Minute Quaker oats)
3/4 level tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 1/2 level tsp cream of tartar
3 level teaspoons ground ginger
9 oz hard margarine
(1 to 1 1/2 sticks od Parkay-the less you use, the more crumbly the texture)
9 oz soft brown sugar
(1 rounded cup)

Set oven to 325 degrees or Mark 3. Well grease a shallow tin 14" by 9". Put flour, oats, bicarbonate of soda, cream of tartar, and ginger in a bowl. Add the margarine cut into small pieces. Rub in well with fingertips until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in sugar. Put into tin and press down firmly with a floured fork. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes until pale brown. Cut into squares whilst warm and leave in tin until completely cold. Keeps well in airtight tin.

The Secret Heart

Here is my Valentine to every parent who remembers looking on a sleeping child...and lingering in the moment....
Enjoy & linger,
Firelight

by Robert P. Tristram Coffin

Across the years he could recall
His father one way best of all.
In the stillest hour of night
The boy awakened to a light.

Half in dreams, he saw his sire
With his great hands full of fire.
The man had struck a match to see
If his son slept peacefully.

He held his palms each side the spark
His love had kindled in the dark.
His two hands were curved apart
In the semblance of a heart.

He wore, it seemed to his small son,
A bare heart on his hidden one,
A heart that gave out such a glow
No son awake could bear to know.

It showed a look upon a face
Too tender for the day to trace.
One instant, it lit all about,
And then the secret heart went out.

But it shone long enough for one
To know that hands held up the sun.

May 20th is the 400th Anniversary of the Publication of Shakespeare's Sonnets: Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! It is an ever fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
William Shakespeare

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Happy Birthday, Pumpkin!

6 comments:

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