Happy Belated St. Pats Day!

We have celebrated St Pats day with some part Irish friends of ours for the last three years.   This year, neither family was available on the real day so we celebrated a week later.   I decided that I was going to corn my own beef.   It doesn't sound as hard as you think.   You take briskets, punch some holes in them, and then rub them with a salt and herb mixture.   Then you put a pan on top of them and press them down.   You refrigerate them for 5-7 days, flipping them once a day.

It turned out very tasty.   A little bit saltier than the store corned beef.   I think I didn't rinse the rub off enough.   But it did make the vegetables very tasty.   And it didn't look pink.   I'm looking forward to making corned beef hash with it.

For dessert I made an Irish Apple Cake which tasted wonderful.   Especially with cream poured over it!

And we all were around one table, too.   You couldn't ask for a more enjoyable evening.

Sap of '09

I finished boiling down the sap Saturday.   We got a great yield this year and made 3.75 gallons of syrup.   It is a little cloudier and darker than last year's syrup.   The '08 syrup is on the right and the '09 syrup is on the left.     We've been told that the warmer the sap gets before it is processed, the darker it is.   And we had several days of 60 degree weather.   I just didn't have the freezer or refrigerator space to store all that sap so some got warm.    But it still tastes great.   It tastes like maple syrup with a hint of molasses.

Can this be March?

We had our monthly homeschool lunch for homeschooling families in our church.   Amazingly it was 65 degrees!  in March!   The children enjoyed the warm weather.   They are playing Sheep and Wolves here.   Later it was Sharks and Minnows.

More Blue Shawls

I had a skein and a half left over from my blue shawl so I decided to make Deborah a shawl out of it.   It is a little skinny but Deborah likes it.   We both wore our shawls to church on Sunday.

If at first you don't succeed,...

Last Saturday was a perfect day for boiling sap down.   It was an unusual 55 degrees and sunny.   It was so warm that we actually had to stop collecting sap on most of our trees in the afternoon.   The trees were starting to bud out.

A friend had some carbon steel pans made for us to boil sap in.   They looked good and heavy duty.   So we cleaned them up...

... and built a two block fireplace out where we have bonfires.

We decided to boil some water in them first both to clean them out and to check them for leaks. Good thing we did. Unfortunately there were pinholes in both pans. They were down low enough and leaked enough that we felt that we would be leaking out as much sap as we would be boiling it away.  
So we reluctantly admitted defeat here (until the holes can be welded shut) and went back to the tried and true (and very slow) method of reducing the sap in electric cookers and skillets.   Now it is a race to get the sap processed before it spoils in the warm weather.

But on the plus side, it was warm enough that my dh suggested a picnic.   So I made soup and hot chocolate and put it in thermoses and brought out sandwiches, chips, and apples.    The children loved the fact that we were eating outside in March.   My dh and I just enjoyed sitting in the sun.

Saturday was also Pi Day.   What is Pi Day?   A day to celebrate the usefulness of the mathmatical term of Pi.   Why Saturday?   It was 3/14 of course!   And what better way to celebrate than to eat pie.   

Cool Pics

Inspired by my brother-in-law's pictures and having a little more time than normal, I decided to take some cool arty pictures while on vacation.   Enjoy. 

Day 7 - A Cold War and a Warm Cave

For our last day in Tucson, we saw the Titan Missile Museum and Kartchner Caverns.  On the way to the Titan Museum, we quickly stopped by to see Mission St. Xavier.   It was a very ornate mission church.   They are in the midst of restoring it.

The inside of the church was packed with painted images and scenes.

Then it was off to the Titan museum.   This is the only Titan museum in the country.    All the rest of the silos were filled in.

It was very impressive.   The safeguards, the backup systems, and the security measures were amazing.   They had exhibits above ground and then they took us underground.   This is the first stage rocket engine.

This is the missile in the silo.   It is of course inoperative.

Now we head underground.

This is the control room.   It was very spooky to be down here.   It is all God's doing that we didn't blow ourselves up back then.

This is the walkway that seperates the control room and crews quarters from the silo.

Here's the view of the missile from one of the areas that would have been used for maintenance.

Here's one of the huge doors.   Look how thick it is.

The children all said that they really liked the museum.   I guess it seemed like ancient history to them.   I kept thinking about all those years that we thought the Soviets were going to kill us all.   So it was a weird feeling seeing this museum.

On the way out of the parking lot, we saw a road runner!   And yes, all the children saw it.

We don't have any pictures of Kartchner Caverns since they don't allow any picture taking there.   They are very very concerned with keeping the cave in pristine condition so we couldn't take anything in the cave except ourselves.   It was a very impressive cave and the children enjoyed themselves.   We saw thin soda straw formations and "curtain" formations that looked like big strips of bacon.   We saw an 5 story column that was amazing along with the traditional stalagtites and stalagmites.   I was glad that someone else discovered this cave.   I don't think I could have done it.

The next day, we headed home.   During one of our flights, the pilot noticed Aaron peeking into the cockpit and he invited Aaron in to sit in his seat.   Pretty cool!

Day 6 - Mountains and Telescopes

Sunday we went to church in the morning and then headed to Kitt Peak Observatory in the afternoon.   

This was the first time that the children had driven up a mountain.   Joe and I were very pleased that they enjoyed themselves very much.   They weren't scared by the height and neither motion sickness or altitude sickness bothered them.

They were thrilled to find snow up on the mountain.   When we got to the top, we were at 8000 ft above sea level.

There were lots of telescopes dotting the top of the mountain.   Three are open to the public.   We saw two of them.

This is one of the biggest on the peak.   We were able to get inside the one on the right.   

This is only part of the telescope.   It was huge inside.

They had put observation windows all around the building and we had wonderful views of the valleys below.

The second telescope we were able to see was a solar telescope.   The telescope is in the slanted part of the building.

This part was deep inside the ground and was mounted on some kind of track.

There was another device about halfway up that had many polished mirrows on it.   It could move up and down on the track also.