NOMS!!!

We had a work potluck and this was made by a coirkers wife...so tasty!

Muhammara
2 twelve-ounce jars roasted red peppers, drained
1 cup chopped walnuts (lightly toasted if you have time)
3/4 cup fine fresh bread crumbs
8 garlic cloves, crushed
3 tablespoons dark agave syrup (or to make it more authentic, use pomegranate molasses instead)
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2-3 tablespoons ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon dried hot red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper (probably not authentic)

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth.  Serve with pita bread or pita chips.

Survived last week....

Survived last week, my last post talked about how I’m amazed at times that I’m a scribe. If we were talking like a D&D character I think I leveled up in my Scribe class and I took extra skill points in drawing, painting and calligraphy. For me it has been a very slow progression, sometimes plateau with scribal arts. I got into in in January of 2001 with the first meeting of the Atenveldt Southern Scriptorium at Megan’s house. Normal participants at that time were Megan, Raylee, myself, Mouse, Bridget and visits from Alex the Scribe. It morphed throughout the years into what we are now which is 9 strong awesome women of various skills who push each other to get out of our comfort zones with arts and just do awesome things. We now have a hedge of laurels normally in attendance which seems to push us to try crazier things. From being at other scriptoriums we’ve found that our way of doing business which is open and honesty critique is not the norm. We expect a critical eye and being told what a scroll is lacking before its ready for presentation. We don’t get annoyed by it but stymied by the words and if we can’t figure out how to do something we learn it from one of ourselves. Our group is also good for pointing out you are painting or shading yourself in circles…I’ve very guilty of that. Anyhoo, I’m reminiscing since ickaimp was figuring out how longs she’s been painting and her journey has been short compared to mine with respect to getting to doing a peerage scroll from start to finish by yourself or in her case the art was mostly by herself with calligraphy and chemistry help by others. It’s a journey for all of us.

So, photos to share:
Violante’s County Scroll
Southern Scriptorium’s Crazy May
The latter album is a WIP since I’m fighting with the Flickr App on my phone to upload things…grump. Other than that Benton and I survived the weekend.

Friday I picked Benton up and he was UBER excited because he’d had no accidents at school and that meant we could go out to dinner (Culver’s) and get ICE CREAM. I guess ice cream is a major motivator for him. We had a nice dinner and ice cream (frozen custard really) and he was soo happy to have done good.

Saturday morning I got up way too early compared to when I went to bed and got ready for Coronation. I got Benton up and he was confused by the fact that I was in “event clothes” and he wanted “event clothes.” Once I reminded him that he got to spend the day with Uncle Ed and get comic books and go to a party and not sit in boring old court all day he was okay. We got out the door and arrived at Ed’s just at 7am and then I headed to Ari’s. She was finishing up putting the pendant seal on Morgan’s Ducal. The kids weren’t ready and she wasn’t even dressed in event clothes yet. So, I got folks moving, Ari got dressed and we got on the road, with me driving Jensen, just before 8am. I had been a smart monkey and put coffee for us in the thermoses. Got to the event, found the ready room and got things settled with Morgan on the items we owed them for the day. Spoke with the incoming herald and then we got ourselves and kiddos situated in the lobby of the conference center and then just hung out all day. And by hang out I mean we sat at the back of court, me knitting and Ari and public_shaylan drinking margaritas. What was nice was we could hear and see court and relax and enjoy our company, kibitz and untangle the largest yarn snarl I’ve ever had that was not created by cats. It took three of us to untangle the rest of the ball but I managed to finish mel’s heel flap on his sock and start my heel flap of my sock (red cashmere). By the end of the day we were all just tranq’d. I drove us home and Mason and Ari fell asleep in the car and Linnet quieted down after a while. Got them dropped off, picked up my car, grabbed an iced coffee and donuts at Dunkin and then picked up Benton.
Benton had had a great day! No accidents, fun at Home Depot making me a cute little flower pot, they hit Hayden’s 1st Bday party which involved some awesome red frosted cupcakes and then hit free comic book day at Fantasy Comics. He had a great day and unfortunately he was so tired and I was so tired that the evening didn’t go too well. He did not want to go to bed and I wanted only that to have time for me to relax. We fought a bit, I yelled and it was not the best of things. I did get to talk with Mel on facetime quite a bit and that was uber helpful for my sanity. But Benton is growing again (more evidence on that later in this post) and I’m sure that along with the stress of dad being gone things weren’t great on Sunday but we managed.

Sunday Benton woke me up with “Momma I pooped!” which means he woke up like that…poor kiddo…it was a big one too. Not surprised though. I changed him and then we both fell back asleep for a few hours which I needed. We got up and then headed to joe’s for breakfast. After Joe’s we hit Costco and then safeway. Benton was pretty good during these excursions and went to the potty at Joes and at Costco. He did run away from me at the entrance to Safeway when I went to get a cart. I yelled and he came back to say “but momma! I was looking at flowers for you!!” because he had run into the floral department. How do you argue with that? I told him that while it was a good thought, running away from Mommy is not a good thing. We did good, had some frozen yogurt and then hit home to watch Cars 2. Now what I missed though was that we didn’t have lunch. It’s okay for me to skip lunch (especially for all of the food /beer I’ve had over the last few weeks) but not for a boy who is in growth mode. So by the time Mel got home, Benton was crabby, very crabby. Dinner was too late and it didn’t work well. Oh, well. We got him to bed, I got to have my husband home and that was the important part.

Monday dawned and we were smart and had coffee ready and went about our day. Benton did not want to get up. I don’t blame him. I was so drained by all of the events of the last few weeks that I was brain dead most of the day. I took off a few hours early to finally take time for just me and got my toes done and then hit some errands. Got home and the house was quiet. Mel was cooking dinner and Benton was ASLEEP. WTF? He fell asleep on the way home and wouldn’t wake up except to say “I’m not tired” and fall back asleep. So we let him sleep. After we had dinner we managed to get him put into pj’s and back in bed. Poor kiddo. Monday was also Cinco de Mayo and I had emailed the scribble list to state “bring booze and munchies” to celebrate the holiday and our scroll slog of the last few weeks. All told we did 35+ scrolls for the weekend including 4 peerages (1 county, 2 ducals and 1 laurel) with only 8-9 of us. It was impressive. I brought booze and forgot ice and luckily Sioux arrived later with ice and limes and salt and cups for good margaritas. We enjoyed ourselves and watched Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr.