The Easter Eggs

     Easter time at our house was always a big deal.  We loved looking forward to it because my Mom used to make these really cool panorama Easter eggs out of sugar.  It wasn't just us that looked forward to it.  The entire neighborhood gang used to congregate at our house after school or on a Saturday when she was making the eggs.
     It was like magic as she used to take plain sugar, color it, bake it, hollow it out, put a fun scene inside of it and then decorate the outside to make it look beautiful.  I know it took her years to get it down right but we loved watching her make these masterpieces out of sugar.
     I plan on making some this year in her memory.  In case anyone wants to make them I am putting the recipe and instructions with this blog.  Enjoy.  When I find mine I'll take a picture and include it in this blog.  Your kids will love this activity and hopefully your memories will be as good as mine were.

Ingredients
5 Cups Sugar
1 Egg White
Food Coloring (Depending upon what color you want)

Mix the granulated sugar in a glass, china, or stainless steel bowl with egg white, until evenly dampened.

Pack into half of the egg mold firmly.  Level off with a knife.

Immediately invert the mold upon a wooden surface and remove mold carefully.  With a paring knife, cut approximately 1/2 inch from the small end of the shell but do not remove it.  Push it gently back against the shell.  This small piece will be removed after baking.

Place shells on board into a 200 degree oven for 15 minutes.  The larger eggs with take longer.

Remove from oven.  Take off the small piece that you cut earlier.  With a teaspoon, scoop out gently damp sugar from inside the shell.  Continue scooping very carefully until you reach the hardened shell.  Do not make the shell too thin.  About 1/4 inches thick is good.

Let it stand for at least one hour before putting a scene inside.

Take the bottom half of the egg, put green icing, green coconut grass, flowers, tiny jelly beans, Easter seals of bunnies, chicks, etc, or anything that appeals to you.

Put Royal icing along rim of the bottom half and put the two halves together.  Let this dry before putting a decorative border along the seam and around the peephole.

Decorate the top of the egg.

Royal Icing (Using meringue powder)
3 level TBS meringue powder
1 lb confectioner's powdered sugar
1/3 cup water
1/2 tsp cream of tarter

Combine ingredients, beat at high speed for 7 - 10 minutes.  Be absolutely sure utensils are free of grease.  Keep covered at all times with a damp cloth.

Royal Icing (Using egg white)
3 egg whites (room temp)
1 lb. confectioner's sugar
1/2 tsp. cream of tarter.

Prepare same as meringue icing.

Add food coloring one drop at a time.  Two drops of red in 5 cup mixture makes a nice pink.

Brushes with Fame

We've all had them.  We love to talk about them.  Sometimes we even get pictures to prove we met them.  I'm talking about brushes with fame, meeting the people who are in the news that we admire, or sometimes don't like but like to brag about that we saw.  We've had a few in our lifetimes.  He're are just a couple.  I'll add more later.

Years ago my daughter had an opportunity to do an internship for a class in Jr. High School.  She got to go to New York City and work with one of the editors of YM magazine.  While she was doing that my wife had made arrangements to go and visit WABC Radio and meet Sean Hannity.  We got more than we bargained for when we got there.  We met with his producer and he introduced us to Flipper (if you listened to his show years ago you'll remember her as his call screener), and we even got to sit in the studio while he was doing the show.  That was an experience we'll never forget.

Now here's something you may not know.  Rush Limbaugh also had his studio right next to Sean.  We got to go in and sit at Rush's chair behind the now famous "Golden EIB Microphone".   Yes, it really is gold plated!  We took some pictures to prove we were there.  What a thrill.  Karen continues to listen to him every day on his podcasts since she is working during the day.

We've met other people throughout the years including Sarah Evans and Donny Osmond, just to name a couple.  Unfortunately we didn't have a camera with us those days.

Halloween Memories

With Halloween almost upon us I couldn’t help but think of the fun times we’ve had over the years. Growing up I went trick or treating until I was about 15 or 16 only because we didn’t want to grow up just yet. But then I discovered how much fun it was to try and scare the kids as they came up to our house. One year I set up a life size dummy corpse on our front porch. Another year I dressed up as a scarecrow and sat on the porch like I was a stuffed scarecrow with the bowl of candy on my lap. When the kids in costume came up I would suddenly come to life and hand them the candy. I scared some of them but not all.

When I grew up and had a daughter I made a costume for her that I thought was pretty cool. OK, so I’m her Dad and most dads don’t sew. I didn’t think this one would be too hard. It was a Crayon costume.

Tara chose pink. It came out very nice. She liked it and we kept it for years until finally deciding to give it away.

 We went to her cousins house and he dressed up like Cookie Monster from Sesame Street. Then we took them through the neighborhoods and they got lots of candy which we then rationed out to them over the next several weeks.  We only took the candy that we knew they wouldn't like for ourselves.  Hey, maybe we don't dress up anymore but we still like the candy.  I no longer dress up for Halloween but I still have a lot of good memories of that holiday.   It's almost more phone giving out the candy and seeing all the other costumes anyway.

It’s too bad some people want to try and take that away from our kids though.

 She had a host of other costumes through the years but these were some of my favorites.

Weight a While

I'm 51 years old now and constantly joke about how long I've been married. While we have been married almost 28 years I tell people that I got married 50 pounds ago. I can make fun of it but it is really getting to me. I have worried about my weight for a long time. When Karen and I married I weighed about 150 to 160 pounds. Now for the confession. I stepped on the scale the other day and it said 226 lbs. I used to think I carried it well but now I always seem to have to get my clothes just a little bit larger. I have several shirts I can't wear right now because they have "shrunk".

It is no longer a laughing matter. I can't put it off any longer. Just this morning my wife said to me, "When I wake up in the morning and don't hear you breathing I get scared because I think you might be dead". Usually she doesn't hear me because I get up earlier than she does and I'm downstairs doing something. I didn't know it was bothering her this much or that she was worrying like that.

I have obsessed about losing weight even going so far as to participate in a weight loss study at a local clinical research facility. It worked at first but then I gained all the weight back after it was over. My problem is will power, focus and follow through. I always start out with the best of intentions. I've never had anyone really push me to lose weight. I'm tired of being "fat". There, I've said it. I'm fat. It doesn't look good on me. I don't like buying the bigger clothes. They don't look good on me. You don't want to see me naked either.

Today I'm going to start watching my weight go down. I'm publishing a picture with this blog so I can track my progress, and so can you. By December 31st, 2011 my weight will be down to at least 190 lbs. That means that over the next 9 months I must lose at least 4 lbs a month. It doesn't sound that bad. We'll see how it goes.