Gravy for the Biscuits

The all important pork sausage gravy for the biscuits

1 tube of Jimmy Deans low fat sausage
1 Cup of milk
2 Tablespoons of corn starch
Couple of squirts of Chulupa hot sauce to taste
pinch of salt to taste

Brown sausage until dry in a large frying pan. Save a quarter of a cup of milk out. Deglaze the pan with the milk poured in on top of the sausage. Mix saved milk out with the cornstarch. Add to the deglazed pan with the sausage and milk mixture. As the miture bubbles up, add Chulupa or other hot sauce to taste.

Biscuit Recipe

A "Double Batch"

Preheat oven to 450 degrees (very hot)

4 Cups of all purpose flour
2 Tbs Baking Powder
2 Tbs Sugar
1/2 Tsp salt
1 C Butter
1 1/2 C of Milk

In a big bowl (like a mixer bowl) stir together flour, baking powder sugar. Using a pastry blender cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Run fingers through mixture to smear any remaining butter clumps into the flour mixture. Make a well in the dry mixture and pour milk all at once into the well. Mix with a spoon to incorporate liquid into the dough. Roll out if desired on a a flat surface. Cut individual biscuits with a water glass.

Bake 10 to 12 minutes at 450 degree oven.

Years of Hard Academic Work A Day to Celebrate

My youngest daughter, Linzi, received her Masters degree from the Sacramento State University this weekend. Her division had their ceremony at Arco Arena. These degrees are very different from undergraduate degrees not just because they represent a dignified body of academic pursuit and a thesis or a project but they usually represent in many of the students a re start of the academic process after obtaining and working in the field for a period of time.

For Lindsay this was most certainly the case. This graduate degree represented not only the pursuit of more academic endeavor after the Bachelors was granted by Sonoma State, put the continuation of a more specialized degree that enhanced her job while she was working in the field. It was not easy to work and get the this next degree and motivations for its pursuit had to come from within. Life coaches were hired and life continued past its easy phases, if there is ever one of those. Lindsay married Sean who has been very supportive of her throughout her pursuits. In the end it got down to her really wanting to finish this degree and the writing that it required.

In the quest for this degree Lindsay worked for the planning department of a major entity until budget cuts took her job. She practiced what she learned in the academic world. What the academic world could not predict was the catastrophic changes that came with reordering our economic where with all. What juiced our economy, real estate can no longer be dependent to finance our dreams or our desires.

The harsh realities have hammered this generation. It has temporarily set back this generation out of its middle class roots and required it to do some time in our parents generation. Single income households are the rule as only one can get work. This has happened with teachers as well as government employees.

It has hammered past generations too. We lost generations of teachers back in the 70s as education was not allowed to expand to meet the need of the growing populaiton. Jobs coming out of college were hard to find. A whole group of teachers were trained and never found jobs in teaching or business for that matter. It took us as a nation a long time to get to where we were planning again for a future. We are once again faced with similar issues. And once again a particular party has as its solution to the problem.. trickle down economics.. give me a break!

The question in this era is how long with our recovery take? Will the recovery get us back to using these people in what they were trained? Have we laid off our expertise to plan us out of future fixes for a gut check based on current economic conditions? I hope not. Lindsay should be there with her academic and practical experience in planning to help us get to a sustainable future. Sadly I fear that we are a few years before we come to the place where this will be possible. What will be the fallout?

My hope is that we will figure this out soon and get planning our way to what we need and project a genuine future for the middle class the true strength of our nation.

Good luck Lindsay with our future in mind. I am so proud that you have another academic feather in your cap. It may take that for what you need to do for us in the future.

: ) DAD

Articles in the NY Times

On my daily walk I stop at Starbucks and sometimes read the left over copies of the NY Times. Today's read had some very interesting articles on Alzheimer and ADHD. The result of the research put together by US researchers and data collected in Italy seems to point to a breakthrough in discovery of the condition. Manipulating the condition is the tough part although you need to know the color and spots of the animal in order to hunt it down.

The NY times has a great article for reference for understanding the disease from a consumer's perspective. This article will give the reader a general understanding of the condition.

Sue and I had attended and interesting conference of our state speech therapist convention down in Long Beach about 10 years ago. Our field has been flooded with clients that think that they had Alzheimer and wanted specific therapies developed for it. A differential diagnosis had to be developed to differentiate between dementia and Alzheimer's disease. They were in the middle of doing studies with adult clients who came to the adult day care for their therapy, rehab, and social interaction. At that time and up to fairly recently the only definitive studies were done on patients that were deceased and allowed for their brains to be studied before death with very expensive MRI technology and cell studies after death.

The current studies are finding that some cells, the ones that allow us to multitask and to move to the daydream thoughts without focus do not get flushed out as quickly into the spinal fluid with clients with Alzheimer conditions as those with non Alzheimer pathology. So if medical research can find a way to enhance this action, it may be the key to maintaining directed thought in these clients.

This is an interesting movement in this field.

: ) Pat

Last day of Art Mondays

Today was the last day of Monday afternoon art for the semester.

My friend Kate Jackson has been teaching and coaching us all semester. Today was the last session.

Recently she has been experimenting with brilliantly colored alcohol based paints on non absorbent papers like dupo. The results have been pretty startling. Many of the works of art look like painting done on stain glass. Its a little hard to control but some level may be obtained with wax and other blocks. Wax always leaves a trace so it have to be correct the first time.

I have been working in a different media. I made a small print from one of my Glacier Bay National Park photos. I switched it over in photoshop to bas relief. The result was an emphasis on texture rather than color. There was certainly an abundance of texture in the print. I took this texture an started to paint the texture into a watercolor canvas. I used some acrylic marble texturing material for some of the relief. I still wanted the painting to look and react like a watercolor so its a combination of the two. Most of the painting was executed with two new colors for Chaap Joes. This company is putting out a nice mix of already mixed colors that produce a mood or a concept. The two colors I used in this painting are called coastal fog and coastal fog blue. The canvas allows for some very nice lifting. It has a tendency to muddy up when the watercolor meets the texture of the marble and the leftover graphite of the pencil. I think that I will be much more careful with the pencil the next time I use in on the canvas.

Today I was working on adding some more mountains with hanging glaciers on them and getting a reflection on the water of the surrounding mountains and the glacier that spills down to the tidewater basin. I used crumpled up plastic wrap to give me a non continuous look in the mountains. The mountains were the source of the glaciers as they headed down toward the sea.

When I brought it home Sue said that it was looking better each time I worked on it. That is good sign because I have a tendency to overwork the painting. I feel that it is very close to being done.

I ordered up and received by delivery three more very large watercolor canvases. It will be fun to think about what will go on them!

Here is to you and your future canvases what every they may be!

: ) Pat

Holly Cole Jazz Singer for the Season

Its dangerous to use Shazam at Starbucks. You end up buying a lot of cool stuff.

The other day I was listening along and came across a singer that I enjoyed while doing my coffee walk. Holly Cole was singing "I Can See Clearly Now," and I thought that it was something that I had to have. It comes off her "The Best of Holly Cole" album.

With some further investigation I discovered that she put out a Christmas album as well. I believe that it is probably the way she is most known. Most of her touring is during the holidays in Canada.

The wiki reference is pretty cool. Holly Cole has a great torch singer that also sings show tunes and even some pop country. I picked up three albums with my emusic subscription. The bassist that she has as a backup is really wonderful. Its great to see a jazz singer that doesn't get lost in the jazz and forgets to sing the lyric. Noteworthy in her best are the 60's songs, Charade, and Alley Cat, Don't Let the Teardrops Rust a Shining Heart,Train Song,I Can See Clearly Now, and the 50's song, Trust in Me, from the "Best of Holly Cole" Album. The Christmas Album,"Baby ITs Cold Outside" has some winners with Santa Baby,Zat you Santa Claus, and the unusual fully orchestrated Wildwood Carol.

Have fun exploring the diversity of Holly Cole!

: ) Pat

Texas Take on Citrus

The following comes from an online paper from academics in Texas. I explored this route because we had a serious frost pretty early this year. The results were that my Meyers Lemon had white and black spots on the fruit and I was concerned about it. Usually I harvest the lemons off this dwarf tree around the second week in January. This is also about the time that we get our first frost. This year we had a week of sub 30 degree mornings. The tips of many home groves show the impact of this cold weather.


Harvesting & Yields

Citrus trees are among the most popular home fruit trees in Texas. A couple of the most common questions regarding harvesting the fruit are, "When is citrus ready to pick?" and, "Should I pick all my citrus to keep them from being damaged by frost?" The following table entitled: "Sugar Development of Satsuma Cultivars In South Central Texas During 2004-2005" gives the accumulated sugars of the new satsuma mandarin varieties in the fall of 2004. This data shows that most of the varieties had a soluble solids (sugar) reading of 10 by the middle of November but by the middle of December more of the varieties registered a 10 or more soluble solids. This data shows that the longer you can leave them on the tree, the sweeter they will get until they begin to drop in January. However, so you won't have to eat a lot of fruit in a short period of time, you can go ahead and eat some of your Satsumas even if they are still somewhat green and tart in October and November. How soon the fruit reaches its maximum sweetness depends on fall weather conditions.
Knowing when to harvest any citrus fruit involves the question of its degree of maturity. Technically speaking, there is no ripening process in citrus fruits and no such thing as "tree ripe" fruit. Citrus fruits pass from immature to mature and finally to an over mature condition while remaining on the tree, but the changes are slow and spread over several months. The only way for homeowners to determine maturity is to taste the fruit. Fruit color is a poor indication of ripeness, because many fruits have fully colored rinds a long time before they can be eaten and some fruit are green when the sugars are high enough to make a delicious tasting citrus. Don't expect citrus fruits to increase in sweetness or ripen more fully once you've picked them, as do peaches and some other fruits. When picked at any stage of maturity, the citrus fruit does not change after picking, except that it may decay or slowly dry out.
Unless damaged by freeze, citrus fruit keeps longer on the tree than if picked and stored so you're not faced with an enormous harvest all at once. Also realize that a mere frost of 30 to 32 degrees F will not injure the trees or fruit. Rather, it takes an extended number of hours below freezing to cause damage to both the tree and fruit. For example, it takes about four hours at 27 degrees F to form ice in a grapefruit; probably a bit less in smaller fruit. Of course lush tender growth can be injured, but for the most part the trees should not really be in an active state of growth at this time of the year.
Some citrus types will ripen a late summer crop from the spring bloom, others will take up to a year or more to mature, and some continue to bloom and fruit year-round. Once you begin to harvest, pick fruit from the lower branches first, leaving the high fruit until later in the season. There are two reasons for this; one is that frost is often more severe near the ground, so low hanging fruit is more likely to be damaged when the weather is cold; secondly, a fruit-rotting fungus disease called brown rot may splash from the soil, where it lives, onto fruit hanging low in the tree. Brown rot can penetrate unblemished citrus fruit rind, unlike other decay organisms which require a break in the rind to cause injury.
When you're picking citrus fruit that you plan to store for awhile, be careful not to bruise or break the skin. Satsuma harvest should involve clipping ripe fruit off with pruning shears instead of pulling it to avoid skin damage. Fruits that are cut or scratched during harvesting will rot fairly quickly in storage. Citrus fruits with perfectly sound skin are fairly decay proof, and will last in cool, moist storage for several weeks (38 to 48 degrees F., 85 to 95 percent relative humidity). Under dry conditions at room temperature, fruits develop off-flavors and shrivel within a week to 10 days.
Oranges and citrus turn colors, just about like the leaves on the trees do, they need a little cool weather and some bright, sunny days to make them really get an orange color, even though the sweetness is there. As the data shows, you can leave them on the tree and they will get sweeter but, so you won't have to eat a lot of fruit in a short period of time, you can go ahead and eat some of your Satsumas even if they are still somewhat green in October. One guy told me they make the best whiskey sours you ever put in your mouth beginning in September. So the oranges are ready even though they're green. Citrus does store very well on the tree so multiple harvests beginning in October and lasting through February will ensure that you enjoy a long harvest period of this delicious and nutritious fruit. The highest quality Satsuma fruit develops soluble solids or sugar levels in the juice above 9.0. This occurred in early November with all cultivars tested.