Dulce de leche bread pudding

Q. If one were going to make dulce de leche by heating sweetened condensed milk in the can (which I highly recommend), what would one do with it?

A. Put it on bread pudding! We made it out of a combination of wheat and French breads, with a custard of milk, sugar, eggs, raisins, cinnamon, and cardamom. The combination was absolutely fabulous. :-)

Oh what a beautiful morning

In the wee hours, we heard wet sleety wintriness clacking against the windowpanes. February's back. Sigh. Well, mini-summer was great while it lasted. :-)

Therefore, since it's a miserable morning, I figured it was a good time to continue Meg's cultural education with this video, a good-parts version of Oklahoma --especially "Oh What a Beautiful Morning," of course! The video actually kept her attention for a good six or seven minutes (singing and dancing usually does). I think she's going to be a very musical person.

We went to the beach yesterday

It was unseasonably warm yesterday - over seventy! - so we went to the beach. It was a lovely day.

The 5 best toys of all time

It's SO REAL.

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2011/01/the-5-best-toys-of-all-time/all/1

Hat tip to... somebody's gchat status. I'm sorry, I forgot who. You can claim it if you want. Rhyme and Reason, maybe?

Daydreams

Me: "Someday, we will have a house where we can sit at the table and open the fridge door at the same time."

Jonathan: "And a little running water [i.e., a stream], and very lax local ordinances on the subject of trebuchets... Heck, I'll even buy trebuchet insurance. I bet homeowner's insurance would cover that, though maybe not if they knew we were using the trebuchet. Hmm! I'll have to think about that."

A duck hath charms to soothe

Jonathan, scooping up a wailey Margaret: "We're going to go hang out with ducks."

We've all been kind of sick-ish lately, and this morning his class was canceled (BLESSINGS on that professor!), so we actually got to sleep in! And come down and eat a proper breakfast! And now I'm going to go upstairs and get some work done.

The only downside is that Meg doesn't feel good, hence the wailies. And further hence, the soothing properties of rubber ducks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah

Meg's not talking exactly, but she will repeat things. Last night we almost thought she could tell the difference between pink and green ("Geen!"), but it was probably a fluke. This morning:

The Beatles: "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah!"

Meg: "Yeah, yeah, yeah, YEAH, YEAH, YEAH!"

And every time the chorus played, she said it again. She's at such an adorable stage!

More thinking about color

Now that I have a pretty re-done bathroom, my new project is the bedroom. I got inspired when the duvet needed washing and I discovered the comforter inside was white! Amazing! Forgot it was in there. So I gave the throw pillows new shams made from some of my brilliantly-colored scarves, in intense pink and bright blue and gold and a rather nifty one in white-and-mod-florals in jewel tones (Forever 21). I really like the exotic look with all our gray wintry January-ness.

What I want is for the room to be a cheerful conglomeration of bright jewel tones. I think that could even work with the red curtains. The problem is, bedroom linens are pretty pricey, not to mention hard to find in the right colors, and my scouring of the house sections at Target and suchlike hasn't turned up anything that looked promising. I tried painting a couple big canvases, but I've got my doubts. Also, the room isn't very big and it is full of dressers and bookshelves and Meg plays with anything within three feet of the floor, so a piece of (say) fascinating antique statuary probably isn't the best plan.

Readers, what do you recommend to add big, inexpensive color to a bedroom? I'm taking suggestions.

Lars Walker on why the Vikings raided

Lars Walker over at Brandywine Books has proposed a new theory as to why the Vikings started raiding the British Isles when they did. Overpopulation? He thinks not. He backs himself up with names and dates and geography and everything.

In which I am horrified by an apostrophe

We're all fighting off colds, so while the immune system is busy, we seem to spend a lot of time staring into space. Even Meggie stared into space briefly today, and then let out a little series of Meggie-sized coughs. It was the saddest thing ever.

Just now as I was staring into space, I gradually started reading the text on the love bowl. This bowl was a wedding present, handmade by a lady I knew growing up, and it's called the "love" bowl because the text from I Corinthians 13 is painted in red around the inside. It's very pretty. Anyway, we'd eaten spaghetti out of it tonight, and I vaguely noticed the line: "Love does not insist on it's own way."

Wait a minute. I concentrated. "it's" - yes, there was definitely an apostrophe. I rallied the wandering neurons and applied the contraction test for which "its" to use: "Does not insist on it is" - nope, doesn't work - the apostrophe is wrong! The treasure of our house has a misplaced apostrophe! In fact, it's a bowl-o! NOOOO! How could we have had it two and a half years and I'd never noticed??

So I mentioned it to Jonathan, who was doing dishes. He was horrified too. He cleverly applied the dishwasher's test to the apostrophe: does it wipe off when you scrub at it?

THE APOSTROPHE WIPED OFF! It was only a bit of tomato! Yay!!