Leora

Week in Review with Maple

red leaf maple, April 2009
red leaf maple, April 2009

On My Blog

Today’s Flowers: Periwinkle, Lilac, and Dogwood
Thursday Challenge: Andromeda
Watery Wednesday: Sandy Hook Bay

Guess the Object

Pros and Cons of Self-Hosted WordPress
20 Twitter and Blog Links to Give Your Friends

A Design, For Fun! (more of this design, coming soon PLUS can you answer the question I asked in that post? Dhaval got the answer.)

Upcoming in Highland Park: bring your used books to the Highland Park Public Library starting on Monday. And in Edison, there’s an upcoming mayoral primary.

Elsewhere on the Internet

A Design, For Fun!

hello_design
I was playing with the ideas in this tutorial by Chris Spooner last night, and I thought, why not post what I did. Not sure what I am going to do with this design, but at some point, making those fun swirly objects will be useful! I used Illustrator to create the vector designs (the rounded blobby things) and Photoshop to put it all together in a collage.

Below is the same exact illustration, but one thing is different. Can you guess what it is?
hello_design

Watery Sandy Hook Bay

bay_wind
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.

bay_upclose

For more watery posts, visit Watery Wednesday:
waterywed

Guess Object Continued

ball_object
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.

Guess the Object

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

Today’s Flowers: Periwinkle, Lilac, and Dogwood

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

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

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

Dancing Dogwood Watercolor
Dancing Dogwood Watercolor
A watercolor with goache I did in 2008 of dogwood flowers

For more flowers, visit Today’s Flowers:
logo_rose_todays_flowers

Week in Review with Tulip

Orange and yellow tulip in my garden, April 2009
Orange and yellow tulip in my garden, April 2009

Elsewhere on the Web

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 at Sandy Hook

Sunset over the bay at Sandy Hook, New Jersey
Sunset over the bay at Sandy Hook, New Jersey
Last Sunday we went to Sandy Hook, a lovely beach with dunes at the top of the New Jersey Shore. There is a bay side and an ocean side to Sandy Hook.
Ocean, beach, and sky at Sandy Hook, New Jersey
Ocean, beach, and sky at Sandy Hook, New Jersey
In contrast to the golden sunset above, the sky was blue at the beach a few hours earlier.

swftomSky 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.

Delicious Pickled Radish

Radishes cooked with umeboshi paste
Radishes cooked with umeboshi paste

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.

Ingredients

  • a bunch of radishes, nice red round ones
  • 1-2 cups of water (depends on how many radishes)
  • 3 Tbsp. umeboshi paste

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.

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