Marching!

While it has remained cold for most of March here in Michigan, we did have quite a lot of beautiful sunny days, thank goodness! The kids have had some opportunities to ride their bikes outside lately, so while Aidan tears up and down the street at speeds that make him look blurry, Esme labors up and down the sidewalk, trying again and again to really ride that bike without training wheels. She is too big for the training wheels now, but can't seem to master bike riding yet. Hopefully it will be soon, as I can't handle supporting her too much longer!

I've continued my adventures in cooking! Here are our restaurant-quality beef and noodles:



Aidan's lighthouse project is complete and on display in the media center at school. If you flip the switch, the light actually comes on! Very cool!


You can see the light switch in this picture.


Turkey Tetrazzini, yum, yum.


Marathi Yellow Fried Rice, at left, and Onion and Yogurt Egg Curry, at right. Really good!


Vanilla Sables, from my French desserts cookbook. Very, very good cookies.


We bought a Wii system and throughout the month we have been busy getting used to it and finding fun things to do with it. I have done Wii Fit every day since I received my balance board - I actually look forward to working out. Jim and I can both tell a big difference in our stamina and muscle mass in only a month of using Wii Fit Plus. We also have Mario Kart and Super Mario Bros Wii, and Band Hero, Guitar Hero 5, and the Beatles expansion pack for Band Hero. We have a drum set, two guitars, and a microphone, so we're our own rock band! Here's The Bofas (minus one of its guitarists, who was taking the picture) - Aidan on drums, Esme on guitar, and Jim on vocals.


Seven Cup Salad - a cup each of hard-boiled eggs, potatoes, cucumbers, apples, onions, ham and Miracle Whip. Delicious.


This was meant to be Veal Marsala, but as I picked up the wrong package in the grocery store, it was Lamb Marsala. It was very good anyway! :)


Nan Khatai - Indian butter cookies, which have pistachios sprinkled on top. Very good.


Pakoda Karhi - apparently pakodas are fried dumplings of chickpea flour, then the karhi is a delicious curry-yogurt sauce in which they are cooked. It was a little odd, but tasty all the same!


This Indian-Style Rice Pilaf recipe is from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook - peanuts and raisins make it just a little bit sweet - it was an excellent accompaniment to the slightly sour Pakoda Karhi above.


Good old-fashioned fudge brownies. Mmmmm.... They last a long time when we're all counting calories!


Chicken Jambalaya - a little boring, compared to what we've been eating lately, but with a spicy kick!


Ham & Bean Soup. We had this a lot in my childhood, because it was cheap. I had never made it before, because of the adverse effect on most members of my family afterward. Ewwwww. Well, we'll just say it still has that effect...but the kids really loved it, and asked for it at leftover time for several days after it was fresh. We had rather a concert of noises and smells going around here for over a week - and it wasn't from Band Hero.


Aidan went back to the orthodontist last week and got the individual bands traded for a single long band which will start to bring his teeth back together now that they are straight.


Jim took me to the Meijer Gardens a couple weekends ago, to take my picture. :) He's such a sweetie. And an excellent photographer - unretouched, folks.

Snow, snow, and more snow

So...in February, it snowed.

Grand Rapids received 28.8 inches of snow in February...and though I don't have the statistics, I think we received significantly more than that in Byron Center, here in the southwest corner of Kent County; probably at least 36 inches. It kept us busy keeping the driveway, sidewalks, and mailbox clear.

We took advantage of one of the very few sunny days in February to drive up to Manistee. Aidan and his classmate Jason are doing a project about the Manistee North Pierhead Light - they have to build a model of the lighthouse and grounds, write a report, and construct a working light circuit. Aidan says they're done - I can't wait to see it! We took some very good pictures while we were up there, for him to use with his project.

It was too cold to stay outside much at the waterfront, but we did snag a couple of quick pics of Esme in front of the Coast Guard station. She wants to join the Coast Guard when she grows up (among many other things).

Jim and Esme really really loved the Daddy-Daughter Dinner at our church. It was an opportunity for Esme to really feel special, and feel special she did. She got a beautiful new dress, with a sweater, shoes, tights, purse, coat and gloves to match, and Jim gave her a pretty wrist corsage as well. We made sure he had a boutonnière to match! We did her hair really pretty, and they had a wonderful and formal time at the dinner together. Aidan and I had dinner at Boston Market and went WebKinz shopping while they were out.

I filed our federal, Michigan and North Carolina taxes and already have our refunds back. I was also privileged to be the tax accountant for my mother-in-law and brother-in-law this year, and their taxes are also duly filed. As always, it was nice to have the intellectual challenge of taxes.

Partly due to a sizeable tax refund, in addition to paying off credit cards, we were able to make some significant purchases last month. One morning I got up and realized half of my clothing was older than my children - and when I stepped on the scale, I had finally reached that elusive 10-pounds-lost mark. So I stuffed a large black trash bag full of clothes that I didn’t like, that were too big, that were too small, or that I just didn’t wear anymore, dropped it off at Goodwill and went to the mall. It felt so good to buy so many new and attractive clothes! I went to Old Navy, Christopher & Banks, J. Jill, and Victoria’s Secret. I’m loving the new stuff.

Last week while we were out picking up some of Jim’s shaving paraphernalia, we decided to buy a Wii system. We have been talking about it for a very long time, but had decided against it, then re-thought, then delayed, then re-delayed...we finally just got one. The deciding factor was the Wii Fit stuff. Now that we’re both really committed to exercise, the treadmill is wearing us down - we needed something new and different to stay interested! My sister uses Wii Fit on a daily basis and loves it. So we took the plunge. Of course, we also got the Mario Kart and Super Mario Bros. games, and it came with Wii Sports. We were careful to explain thoroughly to the children that this is our family game system, and we are not going to buy games that only one person wants to play; that is what their Nintendo DSis are for.

So over the weekend we all tried things out. Predictably, Aidan is the only one that is any good at Mario Kart, Jim and Aidan are the only one with any skill to play Super Mario Bros., and Wii Sports made us all very, very sore, but it was fun! I KO’d both Aidan and Jim my first time boxing. :) My Wii Fit kit arrives tomorrow; I’m anxious to try it out. :)

I've continued my adventures in cooking, and we've had some really terrific meals lately. The kids are starting to get really cautious about what they put in their mouths, but usually they end up liking it! Here is Fruit Cream (a recipe from my Indian cookbook, mostly just fruit and, predictably, cream), and Risotto with Vegetables. Super yummy. I could eat that fruit all day.

When I finally found and purchased a madeleine pan, I gave the Lemon-Almond Madeleines from my French desserts cookbook a try. They are super good, and even Aidan The Dessert-Hater loved them.

Twenty-Four Hour Salad - made famous in the family by my Grandma Hollopeter, this version uses less Miracle Whip, and therefore isn't as tasty. Back to full-strength next time!

Cranberry-Sauced Pork Chops. We all like pork chops (as long as nobody says it too loud, for fear of scaring Pork Chop, Esme's Webkinz pig), but this was even better. We had Stove Top stuffing with this, too.

Split-Pea Soup, which I expected the children to hate. They gobbled it right up. Which just goes to prove that ham makes everything better. :)

Mediterranean Orzo, a recipe from a Family Circle magazine I found laying around at Mom and Dad's house. Delicious. We've had this lots of times, and I always make a lot so that we have lots of leftovers. Unlike most dishes, my kids will happily eat this at every meal for a week.

I tried the Apple Galette from the French desserts cookbook. It's not pretty, but it tasted okay. Next time I will just stick to plain old American apple pie.

We went to the Member Preview of the Big BIG Bugs! exhibit at the Grand Rapids Public Museum. It was cool! It was also crowded and there were a million little misbehaving kids there. I was very proud to be escorting the three best-behaved children in the building (Aidan's friend Mason came along, as Jim was out of town). I liked the planetarium show best - they actually taught us about constellations, like they used to at Cranbrook in the "old days". Here's Esme being a spider on the great big web. The boys wanted to try but no matter how long they waited in "line," kids kept taking cuts, so no dice.

I didn't make these! :) This is a picture from Marge's - I saw those turtle cookies and just had to share this pic with my family from Churubusco. I'm sure Marge has never heard of Turtle Town, USA, but she makes a great Oscar!

Now this one is really good! It is a Basque Cake - a lovely light and fluffy cake with cherry preserves in the middle. Again, I got my dessert-hater to like this one, too. :)

Mixed-grain casserole. Loaded with fiber. :)

Aidan had his braces tightened and the bands changed in late February - he exchanged his blue and yellow Michigan bands for blue and orange Tigers bands. This time there was very little pain and we can already see the difference in the straight-ness of his front teeth.

This is Upma. I have no idea what that means in English, but it's made of semolina and spices - very flavorful. I thought it was kind of like spicy grits, Jim thought it was more like stuffing. Either way, it was great...except Esme hated it. :(

Waldorf Salad - yum! And in the little bowl are kodbole, little spicy rice rings. Too spicy for the kids, and I wasn't particularly fond of them. I didn't make them, though, so no harm done! We bought them at Spice of India.

Plain old yellow cake with plain old butter frosting - Esme's half birthday is about now (hard to say the exact day, really, as February has no 31st!) so she took these to school today for a treat.

In the last month I have finished reading The Fourth Part of the World (excellent book, I'm going to lend it to my folks), The Number Devil (I'm now almost finished reading it to the children, who laugh under their breath at how excited I get about math), and Live and Let Die (which was kinda grisly, but I did enjoy it). Now I'm reading The Music Room by William Fiennes.

It's March, folks! Looks like it came in like a lamb, so who knows what we're in for later this month!

What We're Reading

Jim is still reading the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming, which are currently enjoying a new vogue. I have Live and Let Die in my "to read" pile, but have only read a few pages so far, as I have gotten stuck into several other things.

The children and I are reading The Penderwicks, one of the recommended books for the fourth graders preparing for next month's Battle of the Books among our local elementary schools. Not sure what the format of this upcoming competition will be, but we're trying to plow through as many of the books as we can.

I am nearly finished with The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map that Gave America its Name. I have to admit that when I bought this book, I thought it was fiction. I quickly discovered otherwise as soon as I opened it, but it has really sucked me in! Geography, history, religion, the humanities; they're all in there. It has all the elements of a good story - political intrigue, deception, romance... It's really a great book; I would highly recommend it.

Today Jim and I went to Jos. A. Bank over at the Breton Village Mall, so he could pick out a new tie to match (well, sort of) Esme's new dress for the Daddy-Daughter Dinner next week. That mall also happens to be the home of Pooh Corner, a local independent bookseller and a favorite place of mine. So I went to Pooh Corner while Jim was occupied looking for brass collar stays (*sigh*), and picked up a copy of Where the Red Fern Grows for Aidan, who said he was reading it at school and wanted one for home. (We try to fulfill our children's requests for books, whenever and wherever they crop up.) I was browsing about and a bright red book caught my eye. It's called The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure, by Hans Magnus Enzensberger.

I was intrigued, so I bought it and started to read it in the car on the way home. This is fabulous! I bought it for myself, and thought I might see if the children were interested in it, but now I'm thinking it should be required reading for elementary school students! It makes complex abstract number theory so easy and applicable to children, and it's very well written. Very funny, too. The first chapter dealt with the importance and usefulness of the number 1; the second with the discovery of 0 and the reasons we need it; and the third with prime numbers, how they're determined, and why they're special. The fourth chapter I'm reading now, and it goes into the infinity of numbers, repeating decimals, and more. And it's all so easy!

So quite without meaning to, I'm into two books of nonfiction and very much enjoying both of them.

Adventures in Cooking

I mentioned in my last post that I've been trying a lot of new recipes. Here are photos of some of them.

Clockwise from top right: chicken with cashew nut sauce (sauce contains cashews, yogurt, and a ton of onions, among several other ingredients); garlic naan (Indian flatbread); sugar-coated fennel (I didn't make it, but it is equivalent at Indian establishments to a starlite mint at an Italian restaurant); and pulao. "Pulao" seems to be equivalent in meaning to "rice dish," and so there are many, many different kinds of pulao. This one has about a dozen different spices, raisins, cashews, potatoes, peas, and cauliflower, in a basmati rice base. In my personal opinion, it is the best Indian food I have made so far.


Spaghetti with chicken meatballs (a recipe I got from a Family Circle magazine of Mom's), and cheesy garlic bread (frozen, comes in a box). The spaghetti recipe has 200 calories per serving, no kidding - a serving is a pretty huge plateful.


Obviously not a new recipe here, but these are the 23 pounds of grapefruit and lemons that I received this week from Milton Sprowl, a Glander relative and genealogy buddy from Arizona. I can't eat grapefruit (it counteracts my cholesterol medicine), but Aidan, Esme and Jim are eating them like candy. :)


Jim and I had egg salad sandwiches for lunch on Monday. The last time I made egg salad, the kids professed not to like it, so I'm not forcing it on them.


This lemon tart (from my new Simple French Desserts cookbook) took two days to make. The crust has to be prepared in advance, refrigerated and then frozen, and then completely baked on its own. Then the lemon custard has to be made, and the preparation is agonizingly complex and you can't leave it for a second or it gets ruined. One more turn in the oven and it's done. Mine doesn't look as pretty as the one in the cookbook (I think my tart pan is slightly too small), but it sure tastes wonderful. This recipe, for a 9" tart, uses 10 eggs, not to mention all the butter, sugar, etc. Certainly not low calorie, it weighs in at 521 calories per slice.


Urad dal - lentil soup. Delicious. The recipe also uses asafetida, an herb in common use in India, but practically unheard of here. I had to get it at the Indian grocery and take the saleswoman's word for the bottle's contents, as the labelling is all in Hindi. My research at Wikipedia tells me that the sole purpose of this herb (which stinks to high heaven, and you only use a teeny bit), is to offset the gas-producing effects of lentils. :)


Fruit chat - spicy fruit salad. I got a little weirded out when I read the recipe - a fruit salad that includes cucumbers, tomatoes, and cumin? I got all the fruit cut up and in the bowl, and I almost freaked out and didn't add the spices (that is a lot of $ of fruit to waste, if it was icky). But bravery prevailed and the salad was actually very good. Even the kids scarfed it right up.


This is tali adrak - shallow fried ginger. Nothing in it but sliced fresh ginger, the oil it's cooked in, and salt. Awfully tongue-searing spicy. There are some tastes to which one can never acclimate oneself.


Tortellini with pesto. Actually, I'm not sure you can call it "pesto" as there is no basil in it at all. This is another Family Circle recipe, which actually calls for ravioli. But when the cook grabs the wrong package off the shelf at the grocery store, tortellini works just fine! The green is all broccoli, some of which is ground up in a food processor with parmesan, pine nuts, and fresh spinach, among a few other things. This always disappears quickly.


Several years ago, shortly after we moved back to Michigan, we were invited to Dale and Amy's house for a football-viewing gathering, and Amy served fruit salsa with cinnamon chips. The cinnamon chips were retail, and I have never been able to find them - they are much like Taco Bell's cinnamon twists, only in the shape of chips. I found a recipe for cinnamon tortilla crisps in my Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, and so I tried it using whole wheat tortillas, butter, sugar and cinnamon. They're great, and the perfect consistency for picking up fruit salsa. Amy gave me the recipe for that, and I've made it before specifically to her directions. This time I forgot to get kiwi (substituted bananas) and orange juice (substituted Crystal Light lemonade, which we had in the fridge), and it was still good, but next time I will do it right. :)


Another treasure from the Simple French Desserts book. These are called "nouveaux napoleons," or "new Napoleons," but in France they would call them "mille-feuilles," or "thousand layers". The pastry is made with phyllo dough, butter and sugar. The pastry cream is essentially just a really rich custard. There are fresh raspberries in the middle and the raspberry coulis drizzled on top is made with pureed and strained frozen raspberries. Delicious.


Perusing my Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, I found a lot of recipes I was willing to try that I have never thought of before - and I've had that cookbook for about 15 years. At the top here is a wild rice pilaf with walnuts and dates (a slightly sweet taste), and at the bottom, coquilles Saint-Jacques, a traditional French scallops dish. Scallops in mushroom & cream sauce, essentially. The kids choked it down, I thought it was okay (I don't like scallops, usually), and Jim loved it.


Here are the results of my first foray into Indian cooking. At left, plain naan (Indian flatbread, this is made from a mix). At center, nimbu achar, or pickled lemons. Nasty. Awful. Won't make them ever again. At right, pohe - flattened rice dish, including curry leaves, potatoes, and a bunch of different spices. Flattened rice is sort of a crunchy kind of rice, not meant to soak up any water but just the flavors it's cooked in. This was yummy.


Greek-style turkey pitas went over well for a Saturday lunch.


I found the recipe for this ham and potato soup on allrecipes.com. Of all the potato soups I've tried to make over the years, this one takes the soup. :)

January 2010

Our family's been struggling with illness this month. On Sunday the 10th of January, in the afternoon, Esme started to complain of an upset tummy, and started throwing up about 6 pm - a few minutes before her daddy did the same. Jim and Esme were sick pretty much all night, and Esme stayed home from school on Monday recovering and watching movies in her room. She was all better on Tuesday, but as she'd had a fever on Monday, we had to keep her home one more day. It took Jim about a week to recover completely - but he didn't get a flu shot this year, and the rest of us did. Thankfully, Aidan and I didn't get sick.

About a week after that episode, Aidan and I both came down with mild colds - annoying, but nothing that kept us home or in bed.

Last Thursday the 28th, Aidan came home from school feeling fine, but within a few minutes was feeling sick to his stomach. He went up to bed to rest, and was throwing up by about 7:30 pm. This continued for some time, but he managed to sleep most of the night. He stayed home from school on Friday watching movies in bed, and was well enough to be up and around on Saturday. He is doing great now, a little weak and tired, not willing to eat his usual massive quantities, but well.

We're hoping that's it for the flu among the Lowry family in 2010. (And every future year, frankly, but we know that's not likely!)

Aidan had braces "installed" on his top front 8 teeth on Tuesday 26 January. He was able to choose his band colors - maize and blue, of course - and will have a chance to change his choices each month when he goes for a new wire and bands. These will be on for four to six months, followed by a retainer for some time, and no more orthodontic work until all of his adult teeth come in (and his child jaw grows into an adult one, Lord willing). He was very uncomfortable for about two days, and now he claims there is no pain at all.

Both children are hard at work learning all sorts of new things at school. Esme continues to read up a storm, both at home and at school, and is hopefully dealing well with the snottiness of little girls her age - and also hopefully not making this attitude her own. Why are little girls so mean? It's not like things have changed...little girls were awfully mean in 1979, after all.

Aidan's class is doing long division in math, studying Michigan lighthouses in social studies, and studying electricity in science. He's loving it. He had to miss the Reading Counts pool party on Friday because he was sick, but we promised to make it up to him in Legos. :)

I have been trying a lot of new recipes in an attempt to shake things up in the menu department. I've become acquainted with the local Indian grocery, and in addition to trying a few new Indian dishes, I'm also trying several new French dessert recipes. The kids are a little shell-shocked, but they'll get used to it! Jim and I are very much enjoying it.

Contemplating the Decade II

Our travels in the last decade were pretty extensive...at least Jim's were! He's worked for so many companies in so many places it would be pretty tough to list them all, and we've only been keeping track on paper (for tax reasons) since 2005. Lots of time in the big cities of the east coast, and almost a whole year in San Francisco. He went to Seoul, South Korea once, too!

The two of us took some short vacations - to Niagara Falls, through the northeast and the ancestral stomping grounds, to a couple of remote state parks in Kentucky, a weekend in San Francisco, a few days in Southern California, a few days in Nassau in the Bahamas. Wow! As a family we have now taken two majorish vacations - we went to Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York City in 2008; and in 2009 we went to Disney World.

I can't predict with any certainty where our travels might take us in the next decade, but next summer we're hoping to visit my sister and her husband in Minnesota. We would like to take the children to lots of places, and of course it would be nice to have a bit of time somewhere exotic for ourselves! We'll just have to see what the years ahead bring. Our kids are good travelers and adapt to new situations (new foods, new people) with way more than their usual aplomb.

We're living in our fourth house of the past decade - we rang in the year 2000 in our little house on Montcalm in Lowell, moved to Hawksridge in Covington, KY in 2001, moved to Pinewood in Independence, KY in 2004, and came home to Copperfield in Byron Center in 2006. My distaste for moving is now such that I hope we will still be here in 2020!

Oh, I think that's enough reflecting. Moving on! "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans," right? :)

Contemplating the Decade

A year goes by so fast these days that it's hard to see much change or progress in just one year, but when the ol' ticker turns up a zero, it's a little easier to look back and take stock, and also to look ahead and imagine. I know, I know, the decade doesn't really begin until next year, there was no "year zero" and everything, but Ten just has a nice round sound to it. :)

So! Looking back.

In the year 2000, we were all afraid the computers were all just going to roll over and die, plunging the world into a new Dark Age. Remember that? Jim was working for BDO Seidman then, and they were working around the clock up to the last day, checking and double-checking all the programming, to make sure those extra two digits were where they were supposed to be. They were, of course, and no problem. In light of what happened in 2001, I can't believe people were worried about that.

In the last ten years so many wonderful people have come into our lives, and some have left us for the Lord's Paradise. We said goodbye to Grandpa Hollopeter and Grandma Hollopeter in 2000, and to Grandma McEowen in 2009. Jim's uncle Dick died in 2001, his uncle Bob in 2005, his aunt Hazel in 2006, his uncle Fred in 2007, his aunt Ann in 2007, and his nephew Harley in 2008.

When 2000 dawned, if anyone would have said we would be moving to Kentucky in just over a year, I would have laughed like a hyena at the sheer nonsense of it. But we did, and lived there 5 1/2 years before returning in 2006. And once we were there, I never would have dreamed we'd be back in Michigan before the decade was out. But here we are, and glad to be so!

While we were in Kentucky we met some wonderful friends - many of Jim's colleagues: Greg Sperry and his family in particular; our friends at Immanuel United Methodist Church and at Lakeside Christian Church as well. We miss them all. Susan Nimmo, the director of music ministries and the Sonshine School director at Immanuel UMC was a particular friend of all of ours. We lost Sue to cancer in 2009.

We still miss Skyline Chili, The Pub, and that German sausage place in Kentucky, not to mention the Newport Aquarium and the Cincinnati Zoo, but being near our Michigan family and friends more than makes up for those losses! We have become more than acquainted with the Frederik Meijer Gardens, John Ball Park Zoo, and our Public Museum of Grand Rapids now that we're back in town.

When the decade dawned, we were both employed full-time, making less than half what Jim makes on his own now. We thank God for his many blessings and for supporting our faith and family during the hard financial times of the last few years.

The best of what God has brought us in the last decade is our children - Aidan Malcolm, born 18 July 2000, and Esme Nerys, born 31 August 2003. Aidan will be 10 this year, and Esme will be 7, and I can't believe it any more than you can. I am, however, relieved that I can be pretty sure the next decade won't bring us any diapers or infants crying in the night! We love our children with all our hearts.

In the "oughts" we welcomed Mariah, Cathy, Aidan, Esme, Megan, The Other Wendy, Andrea and Emily into the combined Buche-Lowry-Hollopeter family. We're looking forward to the addition of Jake Kuncaitis, our niece Jessica's fiance, into the family this July. Mom and Dad moved our family's "seat" to Mason, Michigan this past decade, and it's so nice (a) to have them closer to home, as well as (b) to have such a great woodsy place to gather as a family.

Thirty-seven sounds really old, but that's what I'm looking at later this month. I have five white hairs and take three daily pills, but other than that I'm still whole and hale. Forty-seven sounds a heck of a lot older, and I know it's going to take many, many hours on the treadmill, and probably a lot fewer cookies than I ate last year to get to forty-seven in good condition. :)

Obviously I don't know what the next ten years will bring. I hope I will have read the Bible ten more times, and I might also get through my stack of books I got for Christmas before ten years have passed. I hope to have done at least a few more books on branches of my family - or at least the research for the aforesaid. I know I'll be supporting my family through thick and thin, and as we're approaching our children's teenage years at the same time we're approaching our parents' sixties (my folks) and late-seventies/early-eighties (Jim's mom), it's not going to be easy. With a lot of prayer and God's help, we'll be just fine.

It sounds really strange, but after another decade has passed, my son will have graduated from high school and my daughter will be in her senior year (God willing).

More later!