Miscellaneous

Sunday night, I got a flat tire. I'm pretty sure it happened after going up a gravel driveway that had been washed away in spots due to all this rain we've been having. My valve stem was torn, which allowed the air to escape my tire, while the tire itself was still perfectly fine.

Anyhow, today I went to Tire Discounters and got the tire repaired for free. I was pleasantly surprised that they offer free valve stem replacement for the lifetime of your tire if you buy four from them (which I did about a year ago). And to think I was gonna go to Walmart and pay $20-$25?! Which would still have been a cheap fix by the way. So far I have gotten lucky to only tear up my car in fairly minor ways haha

Since summer work has come to an end, I've been looking for small ways to make money until I land another job. One of my bright ideas was to sell green beans from our garden. My dad had way more beans than he cared to fool with, so I offered to take them off his hands. I picked 25 gallons of beans in approximately five hours. My plan was to sell them online. I had someone interested who asked me to pick all the beans and then call them back and tell them how many I had. When I called back, they said they had already bought some. Bummer. So we ended up taking them to the Amish auction instead. 

Tonight, I helped my parents put up corn. My job was to cut corn off the cob, which wasn't too difficult once I got the hang of it. I came close to cutting myself a couple times, but fortunately no trips to the ER were necessary. My mom took a picture of us cutting up the corn, but I don't have a copy of it to share with you quite yet.

P.S.   

I now have the blogger app on my iPad, so hopefully you will be seeing posts more often from me. I hated the hassle of dealing with my ancient laptop to post frequently before, but now I don't have that excuse. 

Until next time, 

-miss ellaneous 

Recipes Anyone?

It's squash & zucchini season, y'all! What have you been doing with the veggies that you've gotten? At home, Mom usually breads the squash and fries them in a cast iron skillet or slices, marinates, and grills them. I have only tried a couple other ways myself, one being the zucchini noodles with marinara sauce for a delicious alternative to spaghetti noodles. I have also made squash/zucchini bread which is usually scrumptious! I don't think I've ever had one of these recipes that I didn't like. But, I know there are MANY more ways to fix them, so please share your recipes too!

Yesterday I decided to use one of my squash in a zucchini bread. I found this recipe on yummly and I liked it because it combined bananas, zucchini and chocolate chips all in one! The fat and sugar in the recipe didn't seem too excessive either, compared to some recipes I found, so I went for it. I replaced the zucchini for yellow squash, the canola oil for coconut oil, and I sprinkled chocolate chips on top! Here's my version of the recipe:

Ingredients: 

• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup coconut oil (Alt: canola, vegetable) 
• 1/2 cup sugar (granulated) 
• 2 cups zucchini/ yellow squash (grated)
• 4 ripe, mashed bananas 
• 1 T vanilla extract
• 3 1/2 cups flour (all purpose)
• 1 T ground cinnamon 
• 1 1/2 t baking powder
• 1 t baking soda
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips 

Preparation: 

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. In a large bowl beat eggs. Add oil, sugars, and vanilla and beat 1 minute more. Add mashed banana and grated zucchini and beat again until well combined, about 1-2 minutes. 
3. In another bowl, whisk together flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
4. Stir flour mixture into wet batter until well combined.
5. Stir in about 3/4 cup of chocolate chips.
6. Divide batter evenly between two load plans. Use remaining chocolate chips to sprinkle on top of batter. 
7. Bake 35-45 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean after being inserted into the center. 
8. Cool about 10 minutes before transferring out of pan and on to cooling rack.
9. Enjoy! It's perfect warm, with some milk! 

I also recently found this recipe for Zucchini Fritters. It sounds tasty. 

Share some of your recipes with me too? 

The Farmer's Daughter

New Job!

I began my new job a week ago. I am now back at CELTS at Berea College as an Americorps VISTA.

History of VISTA
Kennedy had the vision for VISTA and Johnson found the need for these volunteers when he started his "War on Poverty". The premise of VISTA is that volunteers live at the poverty level and serve the community where they are living by increasing capacity of existing programs or creating new programs. All of the volunteer efforts are supposed to help eradicate poverty. The number of volunteers grew over the years. In 1990, Bush founded the Commission on National and Community Service. AmeriCorps was born and VISTA became part of that. Today there are about 8000 volunteers all working to eradicate the core causes of poverty. 

How I ended up here
Okay, so that's VISTA in the big picture. How does that relate to CELTS? I didn't intend to apply to VISTA really. Actually last summer I was sort of turned off by VISTA when I learned that it's focused on indirect service. My only experience had ever been with direct service so office work sounded horrible. If it hadn't been for Heather approaching me about the position, I wouldn't have ever considered it. In fact, I've learned that Heather actually applied to have a VISTA for this role with me in mind, hoping that I would want to do such a thing.

What I'm doing
Here at CELTS my official title is Training Resource Specialist. That does not mean that I am currently a specialist in training resources. It means I do a lot of research and thinking in order to create training resources. My main focus is on the tutoring program here, which offers tutoring to K-12 students. In the past few years, the tutoring program hasn't been as effective as it could be simply because no one has had the time to make changes to the program in accordance to changing educational thinking and college schedules. Hopefully my experience with the program, my education background, and my experience tutoring other places will help me come up with a plan to change the program. We do have some ideas but making them happen is the hard thing. Currently I am restructuring the referral process and the assessment portion of the program. It's quite a bit of computer work.

What it's like
It is strange being back in CELTS just a bit. Currently there are only a handful of summer student workers here, but I imagine when the students get back on campus full force I will have to adjust. Many of these students are people that I worked with when I was a student so making the adjustment from student to staff is somewhat difficult. Since I won't be in a direct leadership role over the students, it should be fine though. Basically the only students I'll be working with directly are my former teammates on One-on-One anyway and I already was their student boss anyway. I look forward to being able to help this program and to learn more about education and teaching. Already I've learned so much about the elementary learning standards.

Book Swap: A Parchment of Leaves

Silas House's A Parchment of Leaves is a portrait of the tension of humanity. Woven with rich language, the text tells the story of a young couple trying to navigate the ties between families. They are asked several times to stretch beyond themselves to forgive past and present faults, and many times only the natural world can help them come to that realization. The novel is set in Kentucky during the early 1900s, when being Native American was not appreciated. A young man, Saul Sullivan, goes up the mountain looking for work but returns with a wife who is nothing like his mother expected. Vine, the young Cherokee girl who steals the heart of Saul, spends the next few years of her married life learning about family ties, forgiveness, and the hatred toward her people. 

The connection to nature in this book made me want to be outside more and more, especially during the gloaming. Unfortunately I spent most of my time reading this book in an airport or inside. Like the characters I have often looked at nature as a connection to God, not in the sense that I speak to God through the trees but that the trees represent God's ability to create beauty. At one point, Vine wonders about the trees and says " They were like God in many respects: they stood silent, and most people only noticed them when the need arose. Maybe all the secrets to life were written on the surface of leaves, waiting to be translated." If we all spent more time pondering nature, I think we might understand God just a bit more or at least desire to be closer to him. 

Family is huge theme in this novel. Amidst tough situations, Saul realizes that "All a man had in this life was his family, and he had to do his best by them. This was the think that would matter most to him when he lay upon his deathbed, taking inventory of his days on earth." At first Saul and Vine each try to cling tightly to their individual families, unwilling to see any faults in their own natural family and always running back when things got tough. They learn that while they can remain close to their own natural family they now have a new family by marriage.

I give this book a 5 out of 5. The story kept me entranced and the language was beautiful. I will leave you with one more quote from the novel that really sticks: "Words become solid on the air when spoken, but quickly drift away. Ink lasts always."

http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/83293/a-parchment-of-leaves-by-silas-house/

Thanks to Martha S. for letting me borrow her book.

-Granny Eyre-

New

Settling In

Wow! Much has changed for me in the matter of a week. I began moving my things into the little apartment a little over one week ago. It is very different living on my own, but I am slowly adjusting. I've lived in this town before but this is such a different setting. I still have boxes to unpack and things to find a place for, but I am enjoying figuring everything out. I have been shopping for home wares and everyone knows I enjoy shopping for a deal! I have found some bargains I need..and some I could have lived without but couldn't resist. Shopping at the local thrift store I found a set of tea/coffee cups with saucers. They were all so colorful and cute, I couldn't pass them up! I'm not sure what I will use them for when I am not hosting a tea party. Very practical, right!? But, they are adorable. Just look at them!

Coffee & tea party, anyone?

This past Sunday my beau was able to come over and enjoy the day with me. We fixed dinner on the grill and it was great! We fixed "baked" potatoes, corn and steak all on the grill and we also had some fresh green beans. We purchased our ribeye steaks from the BC Farm Store because we thought it would be neat to try their beef. They weren't cheap and we weren't totally impressed. They seemed really chewy for ribeyes and I'm not sure if that was a reflection on their beef, our preparation or what. All the sides were great though!

Peach Dump Cake

Speaking of fixing food, I had Miss Ellaneous over for a lovely visit on Monday night and I fixed a peach dump cake (which I have actually been calling peach cobbler) for us to enjoy. We thought it turned out really well, so I thought I'd share the recipe. The original recipe can be found here, but I made some revisions to it, so I will just include the revised edition on here.

Ingredients: 

• 6-8 ripe peaches, sliced
• 1 (12 oz) can evaporated milk
• 3 whole eggs
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 3 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 white cake mix
• 1 cup sliced almonds (or other nuts)
• 1/2 cut butter, melted
• vanilla ice cream, for serving

Directions: 

• Preheat oven to 350°F and grease a 9x13-inch baking dish.
• In a large bowl, mix peaches, evaporated milk, eggs, sugar and cinnamon until well blended. Spread peach mixture in prepared baking dish. Mixture will be very wet. Sprinkle dry cake mix evenly on top of the batter. (Do not prepare cake batter.)
• If adding pecans, sprinkle them over the top of the dry cake mix. Pour melted butter evenly over the top of the cake mix. Bake 50 minutes. Let cool. Top with ice cream and caramel sauce as desired

Various stages of yum

Home

Yesterday I went back home to see a play with my mother and some neighbors she invited. It is The Stephen Foster Story and we have been to it multiple times, but it is a very beautiful production. I didn't want to rush off this morning, but I had to come back to mow my nearly knee-high backyard. My beau was able to help me with it this morning so I hurried back and we tackled it. It looks so much better, but I had to cut it on the highest length setting on the mower so it would cut it, so it'll probably need cut again next week.. It was a very slippery, difficult yard to cut, but I'm just glad to have this first cut behind me. I'll try to keep up with posts about life in the new city!

The Farmer's Daughter