Thursday Challenge: Andromeda

This week’s Thursday Challenge theme is SPRING (Birds, Flowers, Puddles, Trees Budding, Spring Cleaning, Young Animals,…). Click to enlarge.

This week’s Thursday Challenge theme is SPRING (Birds, Flowers, Puddles, Trees Budding, Spring Cleaning, Young Animals,…). Click to enlarge.

Yes, this is the way my life functions; we go on one trip to Sandy Hook, and the result is posts for at least two weeks of this Jersey Shore area. (I still have photos from last June’s Israel trip that I could share, but not today).
These two are on the bay side of Sandy Hook.


This photo has more detail of the object in question. Now can you guess what it is?
See previous Guess the Object post (there are clues in the comments). Mottel correctly guessed the answer; you can see it in the comments. As a reward to him, please go visit his blog and see some of his beautiful photos. Some of have been posted to CNN.

Any idea what this is? Yes, it’s shaped like a ball, but what is it? And where is it?

Periwinkle is growing on the side of my house: it’s a great ground cover for shady spots.

The lilac blooms have already fallen off my neighbor’s bush. They don’t last long.

The dogwood flowers are such a pleasure to view in bloom.


Coach Lisa on Payment vs. Exposure
From the article:
Some of you get paid to speak; others hope to get paid one day. One thing that we all face as paid speakers is the issue of payment vs. exposure. That is, we will be invited to speak pro bono, or will be offered less than our usual rate, and we’ll have to decide if it’s worth it to take less money in order to get exposure or visibility…only a few of my pro bono speaking engagements have paid off in clients or future speaking engagements. Read the rest.
How to Build Natural Immunity against Swine Flu
Rabbi Yoseph Breuer: the Rav of Frankfurt and Washington Heights (via G6)


Sky Watch Friday is a photo meme with photos of sunrises, sunsets, blue skies, gray skies, pink skies, dark skies and any other kind of sky posted by bloggers all over the planet.

Klara gave me this simple recipe two months ago. Since then, I have made it at least 5 times. There are only two ingredients: red radishes and umeboshi paste. Since many of you are going to say, What’s umeboshi paste? Where can I get it? I did a little research. In Highland Park, Anna’s Health Food Store sells this delicious condiment. Others in the U.S. can buy it at your local health food store. Eden makes umeboshi paste with an O-K kosher supervision. Here are some store locations in France that may sell umeboshi paste. Klara tells me there is a health food store in Ma’aleh Adumim (Israel), and the owner delivers in Jerusalem once a week. Feel free to add other locations in the comments.
Why use umeboshi paste? Not only does it taste good, it is also healing. Here’s one site on umeboshi: “Modern day diets tend to create acid conditions within the blood which is more likely to cause illnesses. The strong alkalising effect of umeboshi can help to counteract modern day excesses, including alcohol. ” More here.
Slice all the radishes. Bring water to boil with ume paste. Turn down flame, add radishes, simmer covered for 20 minutes or until radishes are tender.
Another version: After boiling the ume paste in water for ten minutes, pour over radishes and let sit for about an hour. (Note: this is the more “proper” version, which is the pickling method. My cooking version is OK, but not as healthful as leaving the radishes in the ume paste broth. I’ll try pickling method tomorrow).
All the radishes get nice and pink and have a lovely flavor, lose sharpness.
You may drain when pickles ready(optional). When they are room temperature, put them in the refrigerator.

We had exceptionally warm weather on Sunday, and so we traveled with the traffic to the top of the New Jersey shore to a wonderful beach called Sandy Hook. More Sandy Hook photos coming on Thursday, as part of Sky Watch.
Have you ever been to the Jersey Shore? Where did you go?

I appreciate grape hyacinths, small cone-like flowers that grow from fall-planted bulbs, more now that I have whole bunches of them popping up in front of my home.


The grape hyancinths go nicely with the creeping phlox blooming in patches of my front yard.

For more flowers, visit Today’s Flowers:
