Life Without Regret

My life finally feels as though it is on track  not so much that I am dating, but I am finally getting out of the house and living life to the fullest. No wondering what I am going to do with myself on my days off, since I already have something planned. To enjoy someone's company, and they yours matters more than we think could possibly think when we are sitting home alone. I am still a hopeless romantic, that believes in the power of love and the happily ever after (some call bull shit.) I know this will not happen to me all at once, but when two people finally decide they cannot live without each other. I believe there is someone out there that I could make happy, and they would to feel as though they could not breathe without me in there life. They to would want nothing more than to make me happy. Life doesn't always work out as we wished it would, but I feel if we are patient and wait God will send us our soul mate in his time.

Life is good for me now, I am happy and content with the knowledge that all the bad things in my life are in the past now.(Where I needed to put them years ago). There can be nothing left for me but blue skies and sunshine now. I love feeling this way, something I have not felt in years. I am eager to wake up and start my day after finally sleeping eight hours.(Something unheard of for me since I only slept three to four hours a night). I am focused and precise in my work and my colleagues are noting a difference in my work, appearance and demeanor. I was always spreading smiles and sunshine at work, but for several months I had truly lost my bright and perky demeanor.These are the things people love about me, and that I can keep  them laughing,but my light went out for a little while. But, it's back now.  

Life is too short to hide under a rock waiting for the right moment to emerge. Life is meant to be lived. Life is meant to me lived to the fullest. If we happened to hide under a rock we will eventually stay there never to emerge and claim the precious life given to us.Believe me it is hard to trust again, but I must to live a happy productive life regardless of the past. Hindsight is 20/20 so easy to see the mistakes that we ourselves made along the way. We can blame others since they hurt us and our pride, yet we were the fool for believing in a dream, but truly for believing in them. You have to trust people you can see, you know, and never dream of what might be. I learned the hard way, but really we must learn to forgive those who despitefully use us. This is baggage we cannot hold on to. This is baggage that we must let God deal with for we are weak in the flesh. On a more positive note: I forgive you!

I now seek out happiness in all things under the sun. I know that where my past is now= In the past where it belongs. There are people that I shall never forget in my life, most of them made me the person I am today. I learned very valuable lessons that shall follow me all the days of my life. I learned that when life throws you off you have to get back on the horse and ride. I learned that each step in our lives are stepping stones and it how we react to losses, or lost love that will finally ground us and place our foot firmly on the rock. I climbed out of that valley victorious through Jesus Christ our Lord.  

I have no regrets. I regret nothing about the persons I loved and lost. If it was suppose to be so then God would had intervened and made it so. I carried around regrets for years, but I know there was nothing else I could do. To those I loved I did the best I possibly could for you, and I loved you with every fiber of my being. It is time for me to live again. I cannot change the way things worked out, if I could I would had. I can only let go until I see you again.

"GOD BLESS " 

My Gingerbread House

This year I had a little time and Christmas just isn't Christmas without a "Gingerbread" house.

Making a Gingerbread house is a family tradition, even my daddy can do it. haha

We would start the week of Christmas and start baking process and then start building our master piece.

This year I wanted to make several houses to take to the hospital for the kids, but as you can see my Gingerbread house looks like a log cabin instead ..so sad. 

I started not to show it but I found the pictures and photo shop them so they would fit into the blog. 

I know my house could use the show "Home Improvements" on the job, but believe me it could have been worse. 

Making a gingerbread house is no simple task (unless of course you get one of those pre-fab houses, in which case these notes will be of little help). This house took several days, one day to make the dough and the pattern pieces, another to roll out the dough and bake the pieces, one to assemble the pieces, and another to decorate. The joy is really in the making, of the coming together to work on all the steps that are required to build a gingerbread house from scratch.

The following are instructions I used with many gingerbread houses.If you plan on making a gingerbread house yourself, I hope you find them useful.


INGREDIENTS
6 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
4 teaspoons ground ginger
4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves or allspice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 sticks (12 Tbsp) butter, softened
1 1/2 cups packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup dark molasses
1 Tbsp water


METHOD
Make the Gingerbread Dough
1 Whisk together the dry ingredients in a large bowl, set aside.

2 Using an electric mixer, beat on medium speed the butter and brown sugar until fluffy and well blended. Beat in the eggs, molasses and water until well combined.

3 Beat half of the flour mixture into the molasses mixture until well blended and smooth. Stir in the remaining flour. Knead (or use your mixer's dough hook) until well blended. If dough is too soft, add a little more flour.

4 Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least two hours, preferably overnight. You can make it up to 3 days ahead of time. Let sit at room temperature for at least 10 minutes before rolling out.


Create and Cut Out Pattern Pieces
Create a gingerbread house pattern by cutting out pieces of stiff paper (like that of a manila folder) or cardboard. I like cardboard because it's almost as thick as the gingerbread house pieces will be, and you can create a house model easily using the pieces.(1 inch on the pattern = 1 inch in real life), but if not, the dimensions are also given on the pattern so you can use a ruler and create your own.

Make the Gingerbread House Pieces

1 Preheat oven to 350°F, with the oven rack in the middle. Have several flat cookie sheets ready, preferably ones that you know will not warp in the oven heat.

2 Divide the dough in two. Spread parchment paper or wax paper on a large flat surface for rolling. Dust the paper lightly with flour. Working with one portion of the dough at a time, use a rolling pin to roll out the dough to an even thickness of 1/4-inch. Add a little flour to the surface of the dough, and check for sticking as you roll it out. If it sticks to either your rolling pin or the rolling surface, dust with more flour. If the rolled out dough is very soft, you may want to freeze it for an hour before cutting out the patterns.

3 Rub a little flour over the surface of the dough. Place the pattern pieces on the dough, as many pattern pieces as will fit on the dough. Use a small sharp knife to cut out the pattern pieces from the dough, wiping the knife surface clean frequently. Depending on how soft the dough is, you may need to use scissors to cut the wax paper or parchment paper. You can cut out the patterns through the dough and parchment paper, placing the dough pieces with the paper directly on the cookie sheets. If you are not using parchment paper or wax paper, you may need to use a large metal spatula to transfer the dough pieces to a greased cookie sheet. Space the pieces on the cookie sheet an inch apart from each other. If dough pieces stretch during the transfer process, push them back into shape.

You can cut out a door and window(s) at this point, or you can wait until after baking, soon after the pieces have come out of the oven while the cookies are still warm.

4 Bake in a 350°F oven until the edges are just beginning to darken, 11-15 minutes for the large pieces, 6-8 minutes for the small pieces. Rotate the cookie sheets half way through the baking for more even browning. Remove the sheets to racks to cool, about 15 minutes.

While the pieces are still slightly warm, lay the pattern pieces over them and use a large straight chef's knife to trim off any parts of the pieces that have through cooking spread beyond the pattern.

Remove pieces to cool directly on racks to cool completely.

Make Royal Icing
Royal icing is not only used for decorating, but it is the mortar that holds the gingerbread pieces together to form the house. The following proportions should make enough icing for both the mortaring step and for decorating for one gingerbread house.

2 large egg whites
2 2/3 cup powdered sugar, divided
1 Whisk together until smooth the egg whites and 1 1/3 cups of the powdered sugar.

2 If you are planning to eat your gingerbread house, and are concerned about the safety of raw eggs, you can microwave the egg white powdered sugar mixture for several seconds (30-40) until the mixture reaches a temperature of 160 degrees, but not higher than 175°F. You can also use pasteurized dried or liquid egg whites.

3 Add the remaining 1 1/3 cup of powdered sugar to the sugar egg mixture. Using an electric mixer, beat on high speed until the icing holds stiff peaks. If it doesn't form stiff peaks, add more powdered sugar.

4 Place a dampened clean towel over the bowl of royal icing. Keep this towel over the icing to prevent it from drying out while you work with it.

5 When you are ready to mortar or decorate, fill a pastry bag with the icing. If you don't have a pastry bag, you can make your own with a re-sealable plastic freezer bag, just cut off the tip (a small cut) of one of the corners of the bag. Plastic or metal piping tips are available in supermarkets which you can also use with a freezer bag, for more controlled piping.


Construct the Basic House, Mortaring the Pieces Together with Royal Icing
This is where it really helps to have more than two hands working on a house, and why making a gingerbread house is so much more fun with company than alone. If you are working on this alone, it may help to grab some canned goods from the pantry and use the cans to help prop up the pieces while the icing mortar is drying.

1 Pick a solid base for your gingerbread house - either a flat cookie sheet, or a thick, sturdy piece of cardboard. If you want, line the base with aluminum foil or wax paper.


2 Pipe a thick line of icing along a short end of one of the side pieces. Press the iced side piece against the edge of either the front or back pieces. Hold in place for a few minutes until the icing is partially set. Repeat with the other side piece. Prop up with cans if necessary. Repeat with the other short edges of the side pieces and the remaining front/back piece. Pipe icing along the seams, inside and outside of the house, to fill in any gaps and to add extra stability. Pipe icing along the edges of the house where it meets the base. Let set for at least an hour before attempting to add the roof pieces.

If any of the gingerbread house pattern pieces breaks, as can happen easily when working with what are essentially cookies, most likely you can repair them. On my house I forgot to cut out the door and window until the front piece had almost completely cooled. When I went to make the cuts, the piece broke. Fortunately, it was easy to mortar back together with royal icing. We even created a "splint" out of cardboard and used royal icing to hold the splint to the piece. Let harden completely before using the piece for the house construction. When it comes time to decorate, you can pipe icing right over the broken seam and no one will be the wiser.

3 Once the royal icing has dried enough so that the base structure is solid, you can go to work on the roof. Pipe icing all along the top edges of the structure, front and back and two sides. The roof pieces are a rectangular shaped. Place the roof pieces so that the long ends of the rectangle are running along the top of the house. It helps if you have two people working together to place the roof pieces on the house at the same time so that they meet easily at the top center, and extend out a little bit, forming an overhang at each end. Gently hold the roof pieces in place for a few minutes until they are set enough so they don't slide off when you remove your hands. Pipe the top seam of the house with extra icing. Let the house stand for at least an hour, and preferably 8 hours before decorating.

Note: If you have pets in your house, keep them away from the gingerbread house during all phases of construction and decorating. Non-gingerbread-house-building-participating adults and children should be informed to keep their hands off the house as well.

4 The chimney. The dimensions of the chimney can be a bit tricky because of the angle of the roof. Although you may have cut your chimney out of a pattern, these small pieces likely have spread a bit through cooking, and you may have to use a chef's knife to cut the pieces and adjust the angles of the pieces so they align better with the roof. It's easiest to assemble the chimney first upside down, separate from the house. Pipe the pieces together with royal icing and let set until stable. Then, turn the chimney right-side-up and attach it to the roof using piped royal icing. You can do this either right after the house has initially set (1 hour after assembly) or later, during the decorating process.

Decorate the Gingerbread House

This step requires a trip to the candy section of your local grocery store. You can decorate your house with whatever types of candy pleases you. Be careful taking kids along to the store however, as you will invariably buy more candy than you actually need (though they do have the best ideas of what candies would be good for various decorative effects). Red hots are really practical, as are small gumdrops, and candy canes. Audrey used a whole bag of chocolate truffles for the stone wall around her house, and some type of waffle-patterned cookies for roof tiles.

Pipe royal icing to make decorative designs around the walls of the house and roof. Use royal icing to "glue" pieces of candy to the house.

Making Changes

Hey It's me again!  I have many, many things to blog about, but I must be semi private about my life and not disclose all details of it. I say this because I am a open book and have regretted my actions more than once. I really want to sit here and spill it all on my trusted keyboard and then add it among all the other blogs about my life. I started blogging this way so my therapist and I could look over my achievements in dealing with grief I had at the time. Looking back I said it helped and I wrote many poems and songs back then and shared them with my peeps. It did make me feel good to get feedback from others since I then felt I was on a hopeless journey alone. Now, I look at it at just easy access to me, my feelings and a way for people to read about my turmoil at the time and prey upon my weakness. I cannot really say now that blogging helped me in the long run. I now believe that it takes time to grieve and that not everyone's grief ease's at the same rate, since grief never goes away.

I will admit that I became addicted to blogging, but I shared way to much of my personal life with strangers. I have met some really good people that I still share a healthy friendship with still today from my years of blogging, but those are people I can still believe in and trust. I have someone new in my life that is afraid for me to share too much info in my blogging or share all my photos on facebook. Now I am making some changes in my life, and my networking. I know that some of you that read my blog will see I have made some changes already in my writing and have new topics that do not include poor me, or the throwing of pity parties. I have took down many photo's from facebook and not announcing I am going to bed now, going to the gym or what ever activity I may be ready to do at that time. Having the gym you workout in or where you are eating at the time on you're map only gives strangers a very good idea where you are and approach you. The guy I am seeing is not a paranoid schizophrenic, but only concerned with my safety and well being. He also only wants me to share my sexy photos with him. haha 

   

    

My Trifle Recipe

Birthdays, Christmas and New Year, we always have trifle My Mother made it and so did her sister, the same way. Funny how my fiancee once said, 'That's not a real trifle. It hasn't got cream on top of it!' But he had a bowl of it and then another. I did offer to make a 'proper' trifle after that, but funnily enough, I was told to make it just like my mother did.


To make the trifle, you will need-

Harvey's Bristol Cream
2 Jam Swiss Rolls (no cream)
Tin of sliced peaches
Custard powder
Tin of evaporated milk
Sugar
Raspberry jelly
Water

Drain the juice from the peaches.
Fill a large whisky glass almost two thirds full of sherry, then add a small amount of juice from tinned fruit. (have a small glass of sherry for yourself, just to check it tastes good!)
Chop up the Swiss rolls and pour over the sherry mixture. Mash to mix well in.
Make custard, using the evaporated milk, instead of ordinary milk (don't add any water). Make it slightly thicker than normal and pour over sponge/sherry mixture. Arrange the peaches  on top of the custard. Leave to cool completely.
Make the jelly, but instead of making it up to 20 fl. oz. (1 pint), make it to 17 fl. oz, with the water and the rest of the fruit juice.
Carefully pour jelly over the custard and peaches. Leave to set.
Serve with cream or ice cream.
Stay in or you will be Breathalyzed!
Enjoy!

Summer Storm

It rained. Rained and rained until the streets flowed like rivers and the trees bowed like paupers to the king. The trails lost their footing and rocks slid down the path to find a new resting place until the next big gush. I didn't think much about it; so isolated under my big red roof in this muggy adobe house. The white stucco walls keep the solidified wetness out and I am just left with the pitter patter and the sensation of moisture upon my ears and on my skin. But I really notice what has happened when I hit the hills. Nothing is the same on the same old path...no leaf left unmoved and not bird left unsung. It's still so dark from the passing storm that the crickets chirp in confusion and the frogs croak at noon. Just like my taste buds, my nose is drawn to life by the pure dampness of my surroundings. Eucalyptus, fir, lavendar, blossoms, dirt, earth, balsam and vetivere all rush inside me. A prick on my side lets me know I am alive and the bee stuck in my skin reminds me of the passing summer. It's gone. Summer, sunshine, and that chunk of life I tossed to the wind. The skin on my ribs begins to swell in response to the venom and I feel warm. Rain, warmth, and the opposing cold. I feel asleep in this weird other world. Everything looks the same but nothing is...only I am the same. Constant, walking, always trying to change but never really feeling the rain. It's time to flow, move. Even if the pace is a trickle...just like the droplets on my window. They may go ever so slow but at least the get somewhere. Rain on me.

Moving again. Not sure when or where. Just know it is going to happen soon. Will I ever stop? Probably not!

Written 2009 -A Wilson

Thoughts Of The Day

For some reason this blog has recently become a place for whiners, i.e. me, to come and do their deal. I don't like writing whinny things and I don't like reading them so that will stop promptly.

Life is so freakin nuanced. Sometimes I can point out the 101 things that I love about my current life and in the same breath feel completely swallowed by the weight of my world. Most recently my time has been spent wrestling with the following-

+ I would love to leave the country without a return ticket, but I can't imagine living a day without my family.. I like who I am more with my dogs. But I really want to see Nepal.

+ I love dancing (duh) but don't know how much. It's hard to sort out your loves into "love-less" and "love-more" and "love-first". Do I love it enough to sacrifice relationships for? Do I love it enough to justify working a job I hate so that I can enjoy that love? Do I love it more than I love my other loves? It seems trivial until you find yourself having to make lists of what you value in life, and you can't even do that.

+ Vegan pumpkin pie is to die for. Bananas in the filling, coconut milk in the whip=amazing. Although 4 pieces may have been too many. Thanks nice lady cookie friend!

+ In the past 8 years I have experienced being a minority. In my silly little life this has happened very few times but now it's normal, and weird. I don't know how to feel about this; happy, mad, uneasy, free, bad, etc. Examples in the last 3 days: only white girl in the shoe store, only English speaker in the bank, only straight girl at the Halloween party, only degree holder at the show, .I want my children to be minorities sooner than in their 20's that way they know it's okay to be alone in something and to respect others who hold that spot often. Does this sound weird?

+ I love sleeping and scrubbing. I would go to bed at 8 every night if I could and use the most rough, exfoliating, invigorating soap out there all over my body every shower if I thought I could do that without loosing both my social life and my skin.

I think it's marvelous how fog sets so low, so close to the ground, so that those who want to venture above it, can, and in return get to experience the god-like view. Cloud tops like cushions. Night

Balancing Life

I feel I've lost a bit of my touch with reality, or at least that feeling of reality. Like when you know that you are somewhere and when you wake up tomorrow you will still be there and that people expect you to show up to work and such. It's probably all the moving forward I've been doing in the last 8 years that's keeping me from ever sensing permanence or anything like it. Really I don't mind; I like the sense of floating above the world, moving through it like a piece of hair that floats from one edge of my glass of water to the other.

I do admit however that things in the last few weeks have felt something almost sustainable. My home is cozy and warm, and  my bills are minimal, and life costs here are low. I've got a handful of loyal and loving people in my life, and I love this city. I wonder how long I will appreciate these things. Really I think it's rarely the things in my life that bug me but usually me who bugs them ya know?. Usually, I just change enough to grow tired of it. Yet three things in my life I have never grown tired of; my career, love and dance. That's why I hope and almost believe in success here. Also, the lovely Vagabond band leader whom I listened to perform on the quaint Mississippi street reminded me that Baltimore today is like Paris in the 20's, booming with arts and life. That means we all get creative, band together, and make something work. This whole idea of being here and now in a time that could possibly be historic makes me want to invest and invest in a very real, serious way in this community.

 I very much fear being surrounded by kids, having to be their leader, and in a way want to meet that challenge ( this is very uncharacteristic of me, a hard-headed let-me-at-it type of lady). I grew this way a few months back But in the last week , I have had numerous rewarding laughs, hugs, kisses, and tickles with some munchkins that makes me think I've created this wall of fear and maybe it's time I take it down.