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In a crazy year that’s seen cherry cheesecake, 2 pumpkin pies, and crumb cake, yet another new baking venture has procured delicious results! Its all the rage at my house…try it in yours now!

Grandma Hamilton’s Banana Nut Bread

2 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup mashed bananas

Mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add nuts and mix. Cream butter in a different bowl; add sugar gradually and beat until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well each time. Mix in mashed bananas. Add flour mixture and blend lightly. Pour batter into a greased bread pan and allow to stand for 20 min. Bake at 300 for about 70 min.

Really, both the nut and no nut loaves came out absolutely fabulous.

So I joined a coworker’s coed slow-pitch team. We play 2 games on Friday nights throughout the summer at the park just down the street from my house, which rocks. This year we’re doing pretty well – 4-0 after two wins yesterday – and I’m doing well too. I’ve played mostly 1st base, but played a bit of outfield and 2nd base and have made some good plays. I’ve also hit a triple, double, and a few singles so far. Sure we make a few mistakes here and there, but a loss or a mistake isn’t the end of the world because everyone goes home to their ‘real’ lives: kids, jobs, housework, etc. Needless to say, I’m having some fun playing without the pressure of practices and team commitments while enjoying some healthy competitive spirit and meeting new people.

They say bad luck comes in threes. I’ll say – 1) Thursday morning the 4-Runner’s water pump failed on my way to work, instantly overheating it and sending a geyser of steam rolling from beneath the hood. 2) Friday night at our first softball game a 300 lb. man fell on my head, smashing my ear and giving me what I believe to be yet another (minor, thankfully) concussion. 3) My lawnmower’s fuel float keeps sticking, preventing enough gas flow to stall the engine.

Apparently, a water pump is a big pain in the ass to replace on my vehicle. Basically, the pieces on the front of the engine need to be removed to install such a thing, which means 2-4 hours of grunt work (read expensive here). The water pump itself costs about $75, but with labor its gonna run me about $500. *sigh*

My pupils are slightly different sizes and I’ve had a dull headache since (and my ear is quite sensitive and red), so I can only conclude from my extensive experience with the previous concussion (October 2004 – January 2005) that I’ve racked my noggin again. An unfortunate sliding accident – we have no helmets, although I’m thinking of using my old Laurel one – but I was safe at home and we ended up winning both games. I played pretty well too. This one’s a lot less painful – I can still eat and function normally, so I think I’ll be fine.

My pride swelling after replacing the spark plug and air filter and dislodging the fuel float the first time, TJ quickly found that the quite steep slope of our lawn causes the float to again stick. Therefore, its a real pain in the ass to dislodge the *bleeep* every time it sticks again because I get gas all over me and it happens alot. I think some fuel additive or some carburator spray is in order.

So, at the end of my long weekend, I am down one car, have a headache, and smell like gas. Let’s hope next weekend is better.

This Sunday I planted a bunch of flowers a coworker of mine gave me from her flower beds. She has flowers from February to September, so I’m hoping perhaps they’ll start their own pretty bed in the side area next to my driveway. Among them are daffodils, mini daffodils, tulips, pink ladies, a white-flowered ground cover, and little purple flowers (supposedly).

I also planted (in the same bed) some iris bulbs my mom sent me last fall and some tulip bulbs from a plant my supervisor got for Valentine’s Day.

I’m not done yet, however; I’ve still got room in that bed as well as along the side & front of my house, so I’m putting the word out: If you have (extra) flowers and want to join the club, I would be very appreciative of any and all contributions, except of course weeds, which I already have plenty of. Please get ahold of me at agreer at gmail dot com or in person or via phone. Thank you in advance!

Ahhh, the first North Fork camping trip of the year: forgotten gear, a multitude of last-minute preparations, and plenty of rain. The young, undaunted, foolish souls we are, however, pressed on despite the growing obstacles. Although it was only not raining maybe an hour to an hour and a half during the 25 we were there, the three of us considered the event a smashing success.

We relied completely on Mother Nature for firewood, lighting and keeping a sizeable fire throughout the constant rain. With our less than $15 hatchet, Lee and Eric chopped 3 felled trees into an array of logs, kindling, and shavings; my job was to create fire from varying degrees of wet wood, newspaper, and toilet paper. Once the bed of coals was glowing, we used wet wood to shelter the flames from the rain while simultaneously drying out our next burn victims.

To keep mostly dry around camp we rigged a tarp overhang large enough for our three chairs, the cooler, and the firewood & firewood splitting stump with (much) room to spare. Life would have been considerably more painful without this tarp, and therefore we credit it with much of the success of the weekend.

The least successful part of the trip was the sleeping arrangement…all three of us got minorly wet as an incidental touch of the side of the tent caused the dampening of our blankets. Luckily, however, none of us were soaked – just a bit cramped from curling up in a ball all night to preserve heat and prevent more inadvertent tent-touching. Speaking of dryness and preserved heat, I must shout out for Lee’s polypro, an Army extreme cold weather pullover that kept me completely dry the entire weekend. The shirt I wore over it was at times quite wet, yet I never felt a drop.

As we broke the blade of the hatchet in half on Saturday afternoon and would have had to chop more firewood for the evening, we decided to leave Saturday night instead of Sunday afternoon. By 10:30pm, we were all showered and playing Magic: The Gathering, glad to be sleeping indoors. We are, however, looking forward to our next camping trip, and still enjoyed this one quite a bit.