The woods on a snowy morning

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Recommended recipe: High Temperature Eye-of-Round Roast

Source allrecipes.com Servings 6 Ingredients 1 (3 pound) beef eye of round roast Directions 1. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees F (260 degrees C). Season the roast with salt and pepper and place in a roasting pan or baking dish. Do not cover or add water. 2. Place the roast in the preheated oven. Reduce the temperature to 475 degrees F (245 degrees C). Roast for 21 minutes (seven minutes per pound) then turn off the oven and let the roast sit in the hot oven for 2 1/2 hours. Do not open the door at all during this time! 3. Remove the roast from the oven, the internal temperature should have reached at least 145 degrees F (65 degrees C). Carve into thin slices to serve. 4. PREP 5 mins 5. COOK 3 hrs 6. READY IN 3 hrs 5 mins Adapted No

 

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Test post via RSS

I’ve started organizing/managing my life with Springpad, which I recommend very strongly to anyone who has ever had to make a list for anything. I’m a homeowner now, and have found that I have about a million more things to remember, schedule, and organize than I did when I was renting. I’m also using it to organize a vast collection of digital recipes, which I worry about preserving as food blogs and websites come and go. I also like to write stories, and I’ve found it a good tool for tha…

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A crisis of faith (?)

Catholics File Suits on Contraceptive Coverage – NYTimes.com

Its nonsense like this that makes me so angry at the Church I’ve faithfully followed since I was a child.  What the Church is saying now is that they will refuse to allow their female employees to make their own birth-control-related health care decisions even when they have been absolved of all financial responsibility!  This is a level of control that the Church cannot and does not exert over its own female congregants.  Employees of Catholic hospitals and universities are not all required to be Catholic.  The Church is going to court to control the health care decisions of people who haven’t even signed up for the RCC’s belief system, something it does not even do to people who HAVE signed up for said system.

I’m one of these (apparently) horrible women who have taken oral contraceptives at some point in their lives.  I took them at a time that I was not sexually active for the purpose of treating a diagnosed medical disorder (polycystic ovarian syndrome).  In the name of taking a misogynistic hard line on women’s issues, the Church would brand me and other women like me as heretics (or whatever) for seeking proper treatment for an acknowledged medical condition.

I keep trying to tell myself that this is just a policy issue, this is something I can selectively ignore because it has nothing to do with the theology that I’ve embraced all my life.  But it’s starting to ring hollow, if I’m honest with myself, and I am not at all sure what to do about that.

First Bento!

So I’ve decided to try packing bento-style lunches for better portion control and nutritional balance. Sources of inspiration include Just Bento and Lunch in a Box, among other bento websites.

On the menu for today: Harvest Grains (Trader Joe’s), Morningstar Farms “chicken” nuggets, broccoli and grape tomatoes with chipotle hummus, and some black cherries, red grapes, and blueberries. I think I might have packed a little too much (this is a 3 cup box), but the last thing I want is to pack too little and wind up hitting the vending machines. So I’ll gauge my food intake by today’s quantities and adjust accordingly.

Tatting storage!

The Birthday Fairy (read: my mother) visited early this year, and my tatting storage nightmares have become happy dreams!

She and my dad gave me a wonderful big box with drawers for all my threads, and a smaller tackle box for my tatting tools and other small items. I need to dig out my beading supplies and find space for them in here too. Thanks, Mom!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Doily update

I’ve made a bunch of progress on the lace doily I’m making for my mother-in-law. Here’s where it stands now:

I finished the white round, did the second pale blue “daisy” round, and started on the final round of the doily. I couldn’t decide between white and dark blue for the last round, so I went with both — white rings and dark blue chains. I think the effect is rather pretty. What do you think?

So, I’ve had several updates to my personal slate of available technology in the last several months. First, I finally got a smartphone, an iPhone, and I LOVE it! Its camera is actually better (sadly) than my standalone digital camera, so that means that I will now always have a camera available when I want to post a picture.

Second, I now also have an iPad. My husband bought one for himself last year, and he really enjoyed using it. For his birthday this year, I got him the upgraded iPad 2, an admittedly extravagant gift that had the not-entirely-altruistic side effect of transferring the old iPad to me! My biggest reservation with tablet PCs in general has been that they lack a physical keyboard. That’s okay if you’re just going to be a consumer of content, but presents a significant drawback if you want to be a creator of content.

So, I solved that problem by getting myself a Zaggmate bluetooth keyboard that doubles as a case, and hey presto! One sleek, lightweight, 100% mobile tablet-cum-netbook that I can use for all my travel computing needs AND I can write and/or blog with it, too (note the dribbles of lace everywhere heh):

Thanks to some spiffy (and cheap!) apps, I can take pictures on my iPhone, zap them to my iPad via bluetooth, and plunk them right into blog posts, which will automatically upload them to Picasa. This replaces the old rigamarole of taking pictures, sync to desktop, load photos to web, fetch links for photos, compose blog post, insert img links, all of which had to be done from my desktop. How cool is that?! So, I may be blogging more often now that it is less of a hassle to manage the pics, and I’m not chained to my desk. Time will tell!

Location:Blogging from my iPad!