Sour Cream Blueberry Coffee Cake

 

In honour of National Blueberries Month, here is a recipe with blueberries.

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 egg
• 1 cup (8 ounces) reduced-fat sour cream
• 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 3 tablespoons canola oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1-1/2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
• TOPPING:
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup quick-cooking oats
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons cold butter

Directions

• In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda. In another bowl, combine the egg, sour cream, applesauce, oil and vanilla. Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened. Fold in blueberries. Pour into a 9 inch square pan coated with cooking spray.
• For topping, in a bowl, combine the brown sugar, oats and cinnamon; cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle over the batter. Bake at 350° for 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack. Yield: 12 servings.

Photo courtesy http://linnellaatwhataboutthis.files.wordpress.com.

Pitching a Perfect Query

Today I typed my query letter to an editor pitching my picture book idea.  I'm Just a Home Child is the name of my book.  It is a 1900 word picture book for ages 6 to 9.  People seem to be interested in the Home Children.  I have read and/or seen several adult books or children's chapter books about them ex. Little Immigrants (Kenneth Bagnall), Orphan at my Door (Jean Little).  However, I have yet to see a picture book about the Home Children.  I am trying to fill that gap.

I tried to compose the perfect query letter:  concise and yet giving enough details to entice the reader.  I pray that the editor notices the British Home Child stamp that I used to post the letter.  I pray that it sparks the editor's interest rather than just becoming another piece of paper to be recycled. I pray that she requests a copy of my actual manuscript, which I have diligently been editing over the past several months.  I pray that she sees potential in my work.  I pray that she says "YES!" 

I pray that I'm Just a Home Child doesn't end up in the slush pile, but on the bookshelf of a bookstore or a library or a school.  I'll keep you up to date.

Cartoon courtesy http://farm1.staticflickr.com.

 

Prayer in a Garden

Today the world seemed cruel, but evening hours
Were filled with perfume from forgotten flowers.
I saw again familiar filigree
Of moonlight through my lacy Lilac tree;
I heard the robins stirring in their nest;
And saw the path that fairy feet had pressed;
Reflected stars were in my garden pool;
On my warm face the breeze was kind and cool.
The silence seemed to speak, my head was bowed,
Then ramblers that had grown into a cloud
Lifted my eyes that, tear-washed, now could see
The beauty that today was lost to me.
Dear God, who is so near to flowers, and birds,
Be nearer still, as I shall search for words
To thank Thee for the blessings night revealed,
Which through the day discouragement concealed.
Eva Sparks Taylor

Photo courtesy http://1.bp.blogspot.com.

One Small Step for Man, One Giant Leap for Mankind

"Ten Things You Didn't Know About the Apollo 11 Moon Landing"
(by Craig Nelson)

1. The Apollo’s Saturn rockets were packed with enough fuel to throw 100-pound shrapnel three miles, and NASA couldn’t rule out the possibility that they might explode on takeoff. NASA seated its VIP spectators three and a half miles from the launchpad.

2. The Apollo computers had less processing power than a cellphone.

3. Drinking water was a fuel-cell by-product, but Apollo 11’s hydrogen-gas filters didn’t work, making every drink bubbly. Urinating and defecating in zero gravity, meanwhile, had not been figured out; the latter was so troublesome that at least one astronaut spent his entire mission on an anti-diarrhea drug to avoid it.

4. When Apollo 11’s lunar lander, the Eagle, separated from the orbiter, the cabin wasn’t fully depressurized, resulting in a burst of gas equivalent to popping a champagne cork. It threw the module’s landing four miles off-target.

5. Pilot Neil Armstrong nearly ran out of fuel landing the Eagle, and many at mission control worried he might crash. Apollo engineer Milton Silveira, however, was relieved: His tests had shown that there was a small chance the exhaust could shoot back into the rocket as it landed and ignite the remaining propellant.

6. The "one small step for man" wasn’t actually that small. Armstrong set the ship down so gently that its shock absorbers didn’t compress. He had to hop 3.5 feet from the Eagle’s ladder to the surface.

7. When Buzz Aldrin joined Armstrong on the surface, he had to make sure not to lock the Eagle's door because there was no outer handle.

8. The toughest moonwalk task? Planting the flag. NASA’s studies suggested that the lunar soil was soft, but Armstrong and Aldrin found the surface to be a thin wisp of dust over hard rock. They managed to drive the flagpole a few inches into the ground and film it for broadcast, and then took care not to accidentally knock it over.

9. The flag was made by Sears, but NASA refused to acknowledge this because they didn’t want "another Tang."

10. The inner bladder of the space suits—the airtight liner that keeps the astronaut’s body under Earth-like pressure—and the ship’s computer’s ROM chips were handmade by teams of “little old ladies.”

Craig Nelson uncovered these facts in various NASA archives while researching his new book, Rocket Men (Viking; $28).

Source:  www.popsci.com.





Photo courtesy www.popsci.com.

Watercolours: From Audubon to Zornes

My sister Lisa was painting a watercolour scene today.  I thought that I should learn a thing or two about watercolours.  I googled famous water colour painters and came up with a lengthy list, but I only recognized two names, Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Cezanne (I recognized the name John Audubon, but as a someone who loved to study birds, not to paint).  Here are ten watercolours, or "aquarelles" as the French say, painted by famous artists:

1.  Vincent Van Gogh's "Fishing Boats on the Beach", 1888

Image courtesy http://3.bp.blogspot.com.

2.  Maurice Prendergast's "Little Bridge, Venice", 1912

Image courtesy http://uploads1.wikipaintings.org.

3.  Tom Lynch's "Autumn Flight"

Image courtesy www.watercolorpainting.com.

4.  Tom Hill's "In a Mexican Market"

Image courtesy www.watercolorpainting.com.

5.  Charles Demuth's "Still Life With Apples in a Green Glass", 1925

Image courtesy www.museumsyndicate.com.

6.  John Sell Cotman's "Greta Bridge", 1897

Image courtesy http://upload.wikimedia.org.

7.  Mario Cooper's "San Trovaso", 1974

Image courtesy www.watercolorpainting.com.

8.  John Audubon's "Snowy Owl", 1829

Image courtesy http://24.media.tumblr.com.

9.  Ted Kautzky's "Village Scene"

Image courtesy www.watercolorpainting.com.

10.  Milford Zomes' "Beach Party"

Image courtesy www.watercolorpainting.com.

Heat, Hunger & High Heels

Back in the 1930's and 1940's, Walt Disney would take his two daughters to amusement parks and dream of the day that he made his own park, a park that would not just amuse the children, but educate them, a park that would not just interest the children but also their parents, a park that would be unforgettable.  He planned on building his amusement park on an 8-acre strip of land next to his Burbank Studio.  However, World War II intervened and stalled his plan temporarily.

    After V-E Day, Walt set to work making sketches of his Magic Kingdom which would include five different lands:  Main Street USA, Adventureland, Tomorrowland, Fantasyland, Frontierland.  The entrepreneur soon realized that 8 acres of land was insufficient for his park and he decided instead on a 100-acre orange grove near Anaheim (25 miles southeast of Los Angeles).  Building started in July of 1954.  With the park almost complete, Walt invited his family and friends to come and celebrate his 25th wedding anniversary.

     Invitations for the opening day at Disneyland were mailed out to 6,000 people.  On July 17, 1955, however, 28,000 people showed up at Disneyland, many with counterfeited tickets.  A series of mishaps followed:  the staff ran out of food; most of the fountains did not work on a day where the thermometre hit 110 degrees Fahrenheit; a lady got her high-heeled show stuck in the freshly poured asphalt on Main Street USA; and the Mark Twain steamboat almost capsized due to overloading. 

     Even so, people continued to come through the gates of Disneyland everyday and enjoyed the many attractions including:  the Sleeping Beauty Castle, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride; Snow Whites' Adventures, Space Station X-1, Jungle Cruise, Tea Cup Ride, Stage Coach Ride and the scenic railway.  Walt Disney's $17,000,000 amusement park would see 50 million visitors by the end of its first decade.  What a feat for a cartoonist who was once fired from a newspaper job due to lack of creativity!

Photo courtesy http://12.yimg.com.

Fishing on the Susquehanna in July

I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna
or on any river for that matter
to be perfectly honest.


Not in July or any month
have I had the pleasure — if it is a pleasure —
of fishing on the Susquehanna.

I am more likely to be found
in a quiet room like this one —
a painting of a woman on the wall,

a bowl of tangerines on the table —
trying to manufacture the sensation
of fishing on the Susquehanna.

There is little doubt
that others have been fishing
on the Susquehanna,

rowing upstream in a wooden boat,
sliding the oars under the water
then raising them to drip in the light.

But the nearest I have ever come to
fishing on the Susquehanna
was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia,

when I balanced a little egg of time
in front of a painting
in which that river curled around a bend

under a blue cloud-ruffled sky,
dense trees along the banks,
and a fellow with a red bandana

sitting in a small green
flat-bottom boat
holding the thin whip of a pole.

That is something I am unlikely
ever to do, I remember
saying to myself and the person next to me.

Then I blinked and moved on
to other American scenes
of haystacks, water whitening over rocks,

even one of a brown hare
who seemed so wired with alertness
I imagined him springing right out of the frame.

Billy Collins

Image of the Susquehanna courtesy www.delivery.superstock.com.