Footle and Grok

I’ve been reading a fascinating book called Conversations with the Earth by Hans Cloos. I received the 1953 first edition copy from my uncle when I was in college. It sat on my shelf for years, and I never read it. Finally, I decided I needed to read it to decide if I wanted to keep it or not.

Besides the fact that it is a first edition, I want to keep this book. It’s a wonderful travelogue of the world as seen through the eyes of a geologist. Fascinating.

I learned something amazing by reading this book. Before he left for Africa, the author stopped in Naples, Italy. There he saw the Roman Macellum of Pozzuoli, three pillars that were built around the 2nd century AD. Here’s what is amazing.

The pillars are on dry land, but they have bands of boreholes from marine mollusks 27 feet up the pillars. Assuming they were built on dry ground, the land dropped and rose over 27 feet since 2 AD.

I’d never heard of the land moving like this before, so much in such little time. There is a name for this phenomenon. Bradyseism is the gradual uplift or descent of a section of land caused by the filling or emptying of an underground chamber. In the case of the pillars, the ground rises and lowers due to magma underground. The ground can also move due to variations in aquafers.

The Earth is an amazing place, and this is just one more reason why. Geologists often talk about landmasses moving millimeters a year and great change happening over millions of years. It is awesome to see geologic forces occurring on a human time scale.

Yep, that is a Frozen reference because today I’m talking about my freezer.

I cleaned out my freezer last year and thought I knew what was in it. Nope. I still find surprises. (Hubby found a bag of doughnuts in our freezer that I had never seen before. They were horrible.) 

We received a box of lemons from my father-in-law, so Hubby squeezed them and poured the juice into ice cube trays. I love to add lemon cubes to my iced tea. We still had a few small bags of lemon cubes from the last time we got lemons, so I decided to use them before bagging the new ones. I keep the bags of lemon cubes in a plastic magazine holder that I use as a shelf (my freezer has no shelves, so this helps.) 

Behind the bags of lemon cubes were four bags of blackberries.

Surprise!!!

I had no idea. Hubby used to make amazing blackberry cake, but I wanted something different. So I found a yummy recipe for blackberry muffins from Taste of Home. 

I’ve made two batches so far and will be using up the rest of the blackberry bags soon. These muffins are delicious! Plus, more items are leaving my freezer. And these muffins are delicious! Enough said.

Blackberry Muffins

Prep: 15 min. Bake: 20 min. Makes:  1-1/2 dozen

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1-1/4 cups plus 1 tablespoon sugar, divided
• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 cups fresh or frozen blackberries

Directions

• In a large bowl, cream butter and 1-1/4 cups sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt; gradually stir into creamed mixture alternately with milk, beating well after each addition. Fold in blackberries.
• Fill greased or paper-lined muffins cups two-thirds full. Sprinkle with remaining sugar. Bake at 375° for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks. Serve warm.

Nutrition Facts

1 each: 172 calories, 6g fat (3g saturated fat), 38mg cholesterol, 172mg sodium, 28g carbohydrate (16g sugars, 1g fiber), 3g protein.

My second half marathon this June is a trail run near West Yellowstone, Montana. It has a lot of steep hills. I’ve only ever done one trail run, and I ran it in my street running shoes. I learned a lot on that trail run, the number one thing being that I need trail shoes.

I recently bought a pair of Nike running shoes that will work on the trail. They fit well but have one small problem, the shoelaces are short, and it’s difficult to double tie the bows. I hate it when my shoes come untied during a run. It kills my time. 

I went looking for longer shoelaces but ended up buying Locking Laces. I’d never used them before, but I really hate untied shoes.

I’m impressed with the Lock Laces. They were a breeze to lace onto the shoe, and they stay tight on my feet. Plus, my shoes don’t come untied. I’m quite impressed. 

The laces are long so that they would fit most shoes and boots. Once I had them on my shoes, I cut them to the right length. This seems a clever idea. The Lock Laces have a way to keep the ends from flopping around, which I also like.

If you have any annoying shoelaces, I recommend switching them out for Lock Laces (not a sponsor.) For only seven bucks, I expect they will last much longer than my trail running shoes.

This diagram works for any long-term project you have. Just substitute “workout” with the task you might procrastinate on. Then go do it. 

I have a love/hate relationship with lists and charts.

I go through periods where I make a list and do everything on it, and I make a monthly chart of daily habits and fill it all out. But at other times, I make a list or a chart and abandon it by day 2. 

Lately, I’ve been abandoning a lot of lists and charts. The mind is willing, but my followthrough is missing. So I went looking for something to get me back on track.

I started in Google, my go-to for all answers, but didn’t really find anything inspiring. So I went to Pinterest and found something that woke up my give-a-darn. It involves circles and coloring. Hooray!!

If you keep a bullet journal (something I could never do), you may know about circle habit trackers, but this was new to me. Dozens of websites have free ones to download (I’ve shared one here, but there are many more out there.) I found one I liked and filled it out.

These habit trackers can list a few items or many. I chose one that tracks twelve things. That may sound like a lot, but I have a ton of stuff to do each day in May, and many of these habits take 15 minutes or less. I designed my tracker so that if I finish it, I’ll have a circular rainbow. I want to see my rainbow, so I have a reason to reach my goals.

If you are looking for a fun way to track a month’s worth of goals, check out a circular habit tracker. I’m looking forward to May thanks to this chart. I’ll share my chart once the rainbow is complete.

When I wrote about decluttering my baking shelf, I mentioned that I found quick oats and raisins. I forgot to mention that I also found an almost full bottle of Karo Corn Syrup, an ingredient that I never use. So, of course, I googled for oatmeal and Karo syrup recipes.

I found three old-fashioned cookie recipes. Two of them needed chocolate chips, which I didn’t have at the time, and one took raisins, so I decided to make that one. It’s called Oatmeal Hermits. 

I don’t make great cookies. They tend to flatten, spread, and look awful. That’s why I stick with pressing my cookie dough into 9×13 pans and making bars. But this recipe was for cookies, so I took a chance and followed the directions.

The cookies were super simple to mix, only took one bowl, and baked perfectly. They were round and tall. Most importantly, they tasted great. I’ll definitely be making them again since I have a lot of all the ingredients left. (Once the Karo Corn Syrup is gone, I won’t be buying more.)

If you like oatmeal raisin cookies, I highly recommend this recipe. It called for dark Karo Corn Syrup, but I only had light, and it still turned out wonderful.

Oatmeal Hermits

Prep Time: 10 minutes
Bake Time: 12 to 15 minutes per batch
Yield: 3 dozen cookies

Ingredients

2 cups quick oats (not instant)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup raisins
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons Argo® Baking Powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup Karo® Dark Corn Syrup
1/2 cup Corn Oil
2 eggs

Directions

Preheat oven to 375°F. Spray a large baking sheet with cooking spray.

Mix oats, brown sugar, and raisins in a large bowl; add flour, salt, baking powder, and cinnamon and mix well. Whisk together corn syrup, oil, and eggs in a small bowl. Add to dry ingredients and mix well.
Drop dough by rounded tablespoons 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheet.

Bake 12 to 15 minutes until lightly browned around edges. Remove cookies to a wire rack to cool.

Variation: Try substituting 1 cup chocolate chips for the raisins. Omit cinnamon and add 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract to the corn syrup mixture.

I was reading a kid’s book on earthquakes (as one does) and learned that 90% of the world’s earthquakes happen on the Ring of Fire (the plate boundaries that circle the Pacific Ocean.) That number seemed really high to me, so I googled it.

It turns out to be true (don’t doubt children’s science books.)

Now you know it too.

Happy National Jelly Bean Day.

I like jelly beans, but I rarely eat them because I’m picky. I like the big ones and can hardly ever find them. I looked last Easter and could only find the bird egg ones, which are medium-sized at best. I don’t mind the Jelly Belly brand, but it takes too long to find the flavor I want.

That’s the other thing. I’ll eat the red, green, and yellow ones, but my absolute favorites are orange and purple. And I don’t ever eat the black or white ones. So really, eating jelly beans is a chore since I’m so picky.

Most people don’t agree with me since over 16 billion jelly beans are consumed every Easter. They are the third most popular Easter candy.

Do you like jelly beans? Do you have a favorite color? What is your favorite Easter candy?

*Jelly beans are my favorite beans only because I’m not fond of beans unless they are refried.

I have a shelf for my baking ingredients, and a long time ago, I put everything in mason jars and labeled them. The shelf was very full but very organized (or so I believed.)

I was waiting for dinner to cook and decided to empty the baking area and wipe down the shelf. Surprise! A third of the items on the shelf I didn’t know were there, and many of them were too old to use.

As I’ve mentioned, I have a large container of old-fashioned oats in the pantry. I was not happy to find a large mason jar filled with quick oats on my baking shelf. I also found raisins in a jar, which I didn’t know I had because I had a bag of raisins in the pantry that I was using up.

Once I got the shelf cleaned and put usable baking ingredients back, it was no longer overflowing. In fact, it’s only about half full, and I can now see everything from front to back.

When you are cleaning, decluttering, or organizing, don’t assume you know what is in a box, behind a door, or on a shelf. Like, me you might find unwanted surprises and perhaps more stuff that can go away.

At 3:34 a.m. EDT on April 19, humans’ flew on a different planet.

I love writing that. 

Ingenuity rose 10 feet in the air, turned around, took a picture, and landed. That may not sound like much, but it’s as momentous as the Wright Brothers’ first flight. We now know that we can fly on Mars. With that knowledge we can build bigger and better aircraft that will help humans’ explore and live on the red planet. 

Ingenuity will fly again, and each test will teach us something new. It’s a new day in planetary exploration.

CNN has a good article about this first flight, and NASA has many videos about flight if you want to learn more.