part 10 of 364

Things That Keep Melissa Alive

Part 10: Pecan Pie

I've had a lot of people tell me this weekend that my love of Pecan Pie makes me an old person. I have to admit, that's what I used to think before I tried it as well. For some reason it reminded me too much of mince meat pie (I still don't know what that is...and it frightens me). Take this side by side comparison... can you tell which one is pecan and which is mince meat?










Ok, so it's probably not that hard...that mince meat looks terrible.

Finally, at age 15 my horrible prejudice changed. I went to my cousin's wedding in St. George and for their wedding breakfast they had pecan pie. Since I had no other dessert to choose from, I figured I might as well try it and I was amazed how tasty it was!

I then started making the pecan pies for our thanksgiving dinner and I found out why it tastes so good. The filling is basically sugar, butter and eggs. Can't beat that! I have to admit, the pecans are my least favorite part of the pie, but the rest is just so dang good that I'll take the pecans as part of the package.

Add some real whipped cream to the top and you have a pie I can live on for a week straight. And believe me, I have.

view from church

ok, I walked out the back doors of our church yesterday and this is what greeted me.

So much for the smart car....how smart can it be if it scampers up a tree when it gets scared?

Did anyone else see this? What was it doing up there? Maybe it's like what the guy that spoke in the 5th ward stated at the end of his talk: "when you run out of gas, that's a good place to stop."

part 9 of 364

Things that keep Melissa alive:

Part 9: Space Heaters

To illustrate the importance of the space heater in my life, allow me to relate my typical nightly bed routine (keep in mind, I live in the basement):

9:30 - Enter 65° bedroom and turn on space heater. Change to pajamas and exit bedroom, closing door behind me

9:35 - Enter bathroom and perform nightly face routine and teeth brushing

9:37 - Re-enter 70° bedroom and sit in front of my bed next to the space heater with a blanket over me and the space heater to read scriptures and about 1 page of a book before the hard ground causes my sits bones to start to throb.

9:55 - Turn off space heater and light. Enter my bed where I have previously placed a heated rice bag at the foot to warm my feet that are still ice-cubes after sitting huddled next to a space heater for 18 minutes.

11:00 - My feet finally warm up and I fall asleep

So... do I have a circulation issues? How does one keep warm in this stinking cold weather?!

On Saturday morning, our furnace started blowing cold air. Question: why does the furnace wait to die until the coldest day of the season to date? We lived in a 55-60° degree house until Tuesday night, but I was mostly fine because of (you guessed it) my space heater. I didn't really even use it much more than I usually do. Just my same bedtime routine and an occasional 10 minute (warm up my aching bones) sit in front of it during the day.

Now we have a nice new furnace and, of course, the weather has also warmed up.

november concert series: part 2

This was totally a week ago, but it feels like a dream. And yes, I mean a dream come true! I'm almost ashamed how happy this concert made me. If you ever get the chance to see Regina Spektor live, take it.

There were so many things that made me nervous heading into this concert. Like: Where to park? How to get to the concert? How smashed would I get in the mosh-pit? How achy would my cursed flat feet get from standing so long? How hot would I get? How well would I be able to see? How many times would we get mugged in scary downtown west salt lake?

Most of those fears turned out to be unfounded (we only got mugged once). Everything worked out as slick as a schoolmarm's leg (as grandpa would say). Maybe that's because I had a schoolmarm with me (and she really does shave her legs a lot, I think). Luckily we are drinking age, so we could head up to the slightly less crowded balcony and even squish into some seats behind a railing (#1 best part of the night: sitting).

While we waited the 45 minutes as they set up the stage between the opening act and ms Spektor, we were relishing our padded bench balcony seats with excellent view of the poor unfortunate souls on the ground floor. I figured it was a good time for the standard self portrait shot of the two of us. We took approximately 10 that looked like this:And unfortunately the final one was the most decent of me (the only one with my eyes open):

Here's a piece for you to enjoy, though I'm guessing it's not the same if you weren't there.

november concert series: part 1

Busy week for me. I miss the days when I would just sit on the couch and stare, expectantly, at the door waiting for my roommates to come home.

I'm not usually a concert attender (unless it features a symphony and/or the MoTab). I have made a few exceptions in my life. Here is my lifetime list of semi-popular music concerts:

• New Kids on the Block (12 years old, with ear plugs in my ears supplied by the marriott center).
• Lillith Fair (c 1999). It rained (beer and h2o) the whole time, we stayed for Patty, Dar, and Paula then gave up.
• Billy Joel 2007 - (hey, free tickets!) and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Wow, is that really it? I'm lame... So, considering I've only been to 3 real concerts in my life, going to 2 in one week signifies a busy week for me!

It kicked off Monday night with David Gray. Bad omen of the night: I was sweating the moment we sat down. Did they really have to have the heat on with thousands of people and flashing lights? Did I also have to wear a long-sleeved shirt with a wool turtleneck over it? (ah, my concert naivety)










The opening act came out and immediately started playing. She danced about like I would if I were on stage in front of thousands of people. That just made me like her. She even played the banjo! Ok - mostly, she just held it through half a song, but she did pluck out a few notes at the end. The thing I loved most about her songs are the variety of crazy instruments she used. There was some sort of crazy hand pump organ, a thing you blow into that has piano keys attached (my family totally had one of these growing up!), an instrument that sounded and looked like they were playing a saw and a lute...I think.

Learning of new artists always excites me so I visited her website yesterday and found this jewel of a "hello there" page:

"Welcome to my web house.

I suppose this means I'm a grown up now and shouldn't eat chocolate biscuit cake for breakfast.

Starting tomorrow.

Feel free to look around and stay awhile. Like my real house, I'll continue to add things until one day I can't find the cat and have to move,

Lisa

ps. thank you to my mother for knitting the wallpaper"

Reading that made me want to try her chocolate chunk cookie recipe also posted on her site. Too bad I don't know what "preheat your oven to 150 for fan ovens or 170 for fanless" means. (Cooking overseas is so confusing!)

The simplicity of her songs were a great contrast to David Gray's electric guitars and drums. I have to admit, I liked the songs best that were just him on the piano or acoustic guitar and his base player.

ps... you can download a free Lisa Hannigan song here at Amazon. Do it!