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My name isn't really Sandy

Sandy Davenport

I owe you all letters, but instead you get this...

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Eat your veggies

  • 4 days ago
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A month or more ago I showed you a picture of my garage wall and a patch of dirt in front of it. Now it is covered with pea vines falling off their trellis and last night we had peas for dinner, along with baby carrots thinned out from the rows. The meal  (mashed potatoes, hardboiled eggs, new peas and carrots) was simple and clean and reminded me of my childhood, which often featured meat and two veg. No meat nowadays, though.

one day I will tell you about this wallpaper
one day I will tell you about this wallpaper

Ella particularly wanted to plant peas and carrots this year. She helped me sow the seeds, and she's been checking the pea pods everyday for the past week or two to see if they're ready. She even enjoyed shelling them, and worked out a system for getting the little stalk off each pea. I don't remember being that into gardening when I was younger. Maybe because it tended to be men's work in my extended family. Father, uncles, grandfathers - the veggie garden was their domain.

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Rocketfest

  • 7 days ago
  • 1 comment

We have this awesome observatory near by. It is on a big hill out in the countryside and they do lots of science workshops for kids. Last weekend was Rocketfest, where we learned about rockets and then built one ourselves from a kit. Michael was excited by the possibility of a rocket mislaunch and explosion, but it was raining insanely hard, so launch was postponed until this afternoon. In fact, it rained so hard we had to take an alternate route home because the creek had come up over the road.

so wet under the gazebo
so wet under the gazebo
Happily, our rocket did not explode.  Anytime one went up all the kids yelled the countdown, waited to see if the parachute deployed, then ran off in a horde to recover it from the edge of the woods.
I see it, I see it
I see it, I see it
She's returning in July for a week of space exploration.



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What Do You Call Summer?

  • Jun 21, 2009
  • 4 comments

Timm's birthday always creeps up on me somehow. Why do I always wonder if perhaps it is in July after all? Then there's the fact that it is tomorrow, because of the international date line and all. My dentist asked me the other day how old my brother was and I just couldn't figure it out because I was so tense from an accumulation of too many painful tooth treatments this year and the anticipation of yet another. But I'm not as confused as many people are about the Southern Hemisphere. Someone really did once ask me what we call summer. She thought maybe we would call it winter. I have lots of stories like that, but I won't share them, because you know, there are many countries in the world I have no idea about. 

Tim and Rob
Tim and Rob
I think this is all just a long winded way of saying Happy Birthday Timothy Tane.

4 comments

Sponsorship

  • Jun 18, 2009
  • 3 comments

Last week Michael was contacted by an independent chocolate maker in Massachusetts, asking if they could be the official chocolate of Rex Parker. Well, hell yes! Today a parcel arrived with the most beautiful chocolate. It is organic, stone ground (!!) and directly traded with independent cocoa growers. So far, there isn't anything not to love. 

Batch #205: bean origin: DominicanRepublic
Batch #205: bean origin: DominicanRepublic
OMG, the mills are Oaxacan and they Do Not Conch.
like little soaps
like little soaps

Taste Test:
Unlike the Rapunzel chocolate we tried last night, this doesn't smell like rotten fruit. In fact, it smells beautiful and earthy. The texture is grainy but not crunchy - I guess that's the stone grinding. It was, as Michael said, very eatable, not at all waxy, like some dark chocolates we've tried (and we've tried quite a few). The Guajillo Chili was rather spicy and lingered. The vanilla was a little too sweet and I couldn't really taste the tiny-Costa-Rican-plantation grown vanilla. The 70% was good and I'd finish off the whole bar if I was younger.

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Sandra's Muffins

  • Jun 13, 2009
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Saturday Puzzle
Saturday Puzzle
Lots of years ago my aunt Sandra gave me a recipe for carrot raisin muffins. I wrote it in my recipe folder that Ingrid gave me and made them often. Less often now, however, because I have muffin-top issues of a different kind that I'm working on. But today at the end of our woods walk Michael started muttering about muffins, so when we got home I started grating carrots, which is the most tedious part of the process, and voila: lunch! As you can see, I once helpfully calculated that each muffin has 185 calories.
I ate three
I ate three
This folder contains all sorts of goodies from my youth. Gran's sultana cake, Ingrid's Chocolate Fudge Pudding, Gay Dunkley's Plum Sauce, and a kind of liver meat loaf that Bill used to make called "Faggots."  Oh, I just found the baked kumera with peanuts page. Why doesn't New Zealand start marketing the kumera the way they did the kiwifruit? Cause you just can't get them here and I miss them dreadfully. Don't tell me to make do with sweet potatoes or what Americans call "yams", because they just aren't the same.
thinking about food from home makes me hungry
thinking about food from home makes me hungry
 
 

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Five Days of Fun

  • Jun 8, 2009
  • 2 comments
Broome County Transit
Broome County Transit

We've finished all our school work, but for the next week, we all have a legal obligation to keep showing up anyway. So we're doing fun stuff. Starting with public transportation. It turns out that more than half my students have never taken the bus anywhere (apart from the big yellow school bus, which doesn't count). So this morning we walked down to the corner of Main and Willow, each clutching a dollar and a quarter, and picked up the #25 over to Binghamton University. We goofed around there for a while, then headed back. On the return trip we had the same driver, who was curious as to what we were doing, so I told him. He then very kindly explained to the students that if they ever had any questions, they should ask the Bus Driver, because the Bus Driver was There To Help.

100_2076100_2084100_2077100_2082
  And yes, you can see there in the second photo how much I am respected.

2 comments

Graduation

  • Jun 2, 2009
  • 4 comments

Days like this, I love my job. Sure, there are two more weeks of school left before summer, but for scheduling reasons, we had our "graduation" tonight. We get together with the other classes in our program (those are the ones who want to be engineering and medical professionals - mine want to be teachers and lawyers) and handed out compliments and certificates. My guys got me flowers and thanked me on stage, then I got to tell all their parents how awesome they are, and mean it. People might complain about "kids these days," but from where I stand, the future looks like it is in the hands of some smart, funny, compassionate, and motivated people. I couldn't be prouder.

I tried removing the red eye, but it just made everyone look freaky
I tried removing the red eye, but it just made everyone look freaky


4 comments

Dog Party

  • May 25, 2009
  • 3 comments

This post is mostly for Donna, 'cause we're dog sitting Baxter this weekend and she'd like to see pictures of her baby boy. 

down in the glen
down in the glen
Baxter and Gabby turn One Year Old today. So we went for a Birthday Walk in the Woods. Ok, so we go for a walk most days, but whatever. I really really have to start saving for a digital SLR because the dogs move too fast for my little camera. See:
Dog Tag
Dog Tag

And just one more, even though I could go on and on:
"There's a dog loose in the woods."
"There's a dog loose in the woods."
So, I'll lay off blogging the dogs for a while to give you a break. But walking with them in the woods is a big part of life and makes me feel like everything is good.

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Return of Soup Club

  • May 20, 2009
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We had a little rough spot there, brought on by the pressures of winter and work, where soup just wasn't happening. But Kim got her act together last week and made gazpacho. And egg salad 'cause she thought the soup would be too much like drinking salad. Although the egg was also salad, so I guess we had two kinds of salad. Here it is:

Cold Soup
Cold Soup
Michael got quite motivated and decided to make Moroccan Griddled Peppers for an appetizer. Here he is griddling, and yes, he strikes this pose All The Time when he's cooking.
I probably could have picked a better photo
I probably could have picked a better photo

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Oops

  • May 14, 2009
  • 1 comment
phones are phragile
phones are phragile

This is exactly what happened to my last phone too. Because I keep dropping them. So, now I'm wondering if I really need a phone at all. I'm not going to go into any long philosophical rants about technology, but honestly, do I need one? Actually, I'd kind of love an iphone, but what if I dropped it? At least this one was "free" after the $50 rebate. So, what I'm saying is, if you need to get hold of me in a hurry, call the land line.  


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Read more from My name isn't really Sandy »

My name isn't really Sandy

About Me

My name isn't really Sandy
United States
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Here are some places I like to go at lunch time

  • Rex Parker Does the NY Times Crossword Puzzle
  • Elsie and Joe
  • Michael5000
  • Extreme Craft
  • What not to crochet

Photos

  • one day I will tell you about this wallpaper
  • I see it, I see it
  • so wet under the gazebo
  • Tim and Rob
  • like little soaps
  • Batch #205: bean origin: DominicanRepublic
  • thinking about food from home makes me hungry
  • I ate three
  • Saturday Puzzle

View more of my photos

Neighborhood

  • Team Vox
    Team Vox Updated: Jun 17, 2009
  • Mush
    Mush Updated: Dec 12, 2008
  • Pip
    Pip Updated: Jan 6, 2008
  • Wanaka
    Wanaka Updated: Dec 16, 2007
  • Robin
    Robin Updated: Nov 29, 2007

Explore friends, family, friends & family, or entire neighborhood.

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Videos

  • this sounded fine on my computer, but weird on Michael's
  • 100_1951
  • Pyung Ahn Cho Dan

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Books

  • Septimus Heap, Book Three: Physik
  • Septimus Heap - Flyte
  • Leven Thumps: Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo; Leven Thumps and the Whispered Secret
  • Magyk, Spanish Edition (Septimus Heap, Libro Uno)
  • Flight: A Novel
  • Inkspell (Inkheart)
  • His Illegal Self (Vintage International)
  • The People of Sparks (Books of Ember)

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  • taylor

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