Quote of the Week

from Tumtum Tree via pinterest

not sure I agree with all of these but it's nice to have affirmation of my trained early riser behavior

Quote of the Week

via pinterest

Quote of the Week

from 28.media via pinterest

Uncle John's NASA SHERE project

My brother John sent a link to this video of one of the projects he works on. He says, "Here's a link to an excellent video Mike Fossum made of SHERE II (one the experiments I designed) during our first science runs on Monday.  It has been posted to the NASA web site, and it really shows off SHERE well!"

Astronaut Mike Fossum With SHERE

Flight Engineer Mike Fossum aboard the International Space Station takes a moment to demonstrate the Shear History Extensional Rheology Experiment. Known as SHERE, the experiment investigates the effect of rotation on the stress and strain response of a polymer fluid being stretched in microgravity. SHERE provides information that is critical for the evolution of containerless processing, an important operation for fabrication of parts used on future exploration missions.

Zucchini Casserole

This is a favorite in my extended family! I'm posting it here so we don't have to dig through Mom's recipe box for half an hour to find it. =D

Gayle assembles the casserole deliciousness:

And here's the recipe:

Recapping T's Birthday/Schotz's Big Bite Take 3

For T's birthday, July 24th, we did Schotz's Big Bite Take 3 (Schotz's Big Bite here, SBB Take 2 here) with the Guy's Big Bite episode "Boardwalk Wieners." We made hot dogs (wieners Rhode Island style), onion rings, peach cobbler, and T got a special present from Heather, his babysitter.

We started by slicing two onions (Texas Sweets) in buttermilk for an hour:

Next we made the chili...

... made the peach cobbler filling...

... and got ready to fry the onions. Seasoned flour is in the big pan, beer batter in the smaller one (we used Sweetwater 420 for the batter). 

Making the onion rings:

We boiled the hot dogs, steamed the buns and assembled the Boardwalk Weiners. Final product:

Baking the cobbler:

The whole dinner was a big success. T especially liked the onion rings (so much so that we didn't get a photo of the finished product!). The icing on the cake was this adorable "cookie T" that Heather made him:

Happy birthday T!

Wade Chapel

While we were at Lakeview Cemetery on Friday we visited the Wade Memorial Chapel.

The interior was designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany and his studios in New York and it is stunning. The centerpiece is an enormous stained glass window at the front of the chapel:

Along the side walls are intricate mosaic murals (each one is 8 feet tall and 32 feet long) depicting sections of the Old Testament of the Bible. The docent, a former Latin teacher, shined a light on different areas and explained their significance. 

My nephew, Ethan, who visited in the spring with his gifted class, told us about the back entrance. The chapel is built on a hillside with the back a level lower so the horse-drawn carriage could deliver the coffin sight unseen. Inside the back entrance, a series of pulleys would raise the deceased up to the front of the chapel. 

On a side note, even the floor in the chapel was beautiful:

Learn more about the chapel here.