Monthly Archives: July 2010

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July 4th – Everything But The Fireworks

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We have guests from America here for one more day and we’re off in a few minutes to squeeze as much of Cornwall as we can into their last day. Yesterday was a rocking July 4th for us right down to an end of the evening sing-a-long. I’ll be back later with some funny pictures … (I only took about 300) and some stories to share. I hope your day was as memorable as mine.

If you celebrated the July 4th holiday, I’d love to hear about it and if you’re a blogger and wrote about your day on your site, feel free to leave a link.

* I took the flower shot above yesterday because it made me think of fireworks with all of the bursts of color in the background.

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Is This How Pioneer Woman Does It?

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Pioneer Woman's Chocolate Sheet Cake As Mini-Cupcakes

Unless you have made these yummy treats you have no idea how delish they can really are. What you see here is the result of turning Pioneer Woman’s Chocolate Sheet Cake recipe into mini cupcakes which were perfect for the party we went to last night and the July 4th celebration we’re going to on Sunday with some of our expat community. It was the first time I’ve made them in mini-cupcake form and the success was clear by the clean serving trays we came home with after watching my cupcakes disappear into the mouths of a mostly (except for me) group of Brits.

Several people asked as they complimented my bite-size cakes if they were an American speciality to which I gave credit where it’s due and said, ” Yes, but not a family recipe of mine. ” I told them it belonged to this wild woman out West who went by the name of Pioneer Woman.

Okay … so maybe I embellished a little with the wild woman comment, but as most Brits seem to think they’ve mastered an American accent if they sound like John Wayne when imitating us, (likely having learned their technique as my John did from old western black & white films) I thought wild woman out west would fit the image many seem to have of us as a tough talking, gun-toting, straight shooting, slightly unruly lot.

Passing by the dessert table or puddings, as all desserts are sometimes referred to here was a teenage girl who overheard me give credit to PW and turned to me and said, ” Oh, I read her, did you see what she said about iPad on her blog? ” I have to admit that PW seems to be moving farther abroad than she may realize. Thanks to the internet, not only has she young American followers like my daughter reading her, she’s picking up teen readers in rural England as well.

While PW appears to have a tidy kitchen when making her varied goodies, I must admit that my prep area looks a bit different.

Not Pioneer Woman's Kitchen

Thank goodness for lots of counter space or work-tops as John would refer to kitchen counters.

Messy Cooking With Elizabeth Harper

Gone, these are all gone now.

I call the cupcake closest to you, ” The Half and Half  ” for half nuts/ half not … neat huh? Okay, so I ran out of the frosting with nuts and had to use some without. I bet no one even noticed at the party last night. Creativity is key in marketing. I think I like that … Half and Half … I wonder what I could call my other kitchen mishaps.

My daughter once referred to my turkey meatloaf as looking like cat food, I must say years after that high recommendation by my then seven-year old, it’s one of the things I do best now. (Pssst, I’ll be making my cat food/turkey meatloaf for some American visitors this weekend) I promise I really do use ground turkey … no cat food involved. Cross my heart.

Remember what I said earlier about messy … I wonder who’s going to help me with these dishes!

Maybe I could do a reality show for messy cooks … how about you, are you messy or neat when whipping up family favorites?

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My Changing Perspective On Finding Community

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When my husband and I met for the first time in person only six weeks after meeting online, I came to him. I had loads of frequent flyer miles and two weeks of vacation time that I would lose if I did not use it before the end of that month so off I went to England to meet the man I had found quite by accident online.

I had no idea what to expect really even though I had seen photographs of John and Cornwall and even bits of his house and the village, I still did not have a real feeling of what life was like there.

While there are some properties that have parts as old as the 12th or 14th century in the village, we live in a more modern section with many of the houses around us being only twenty or so years old and our home a very young one at thirteen years.

Seeing the houses built so tightly together with so much open land all around them was a surprise to me. I’m not sure why exactly, but I remember thinking at first what a shame it was that the houses were so close. I considered how difficult it must be to feel as if you had any privacy with the houses built as they were.

The view was beautiful though and I was able to see a far distance over the village from my early morning position on the sofa where I would sit with my laptop and write. Blessed with all this beauty I still grumbled to myself about how, as pretty as it was, it would be prettier without the rooftops of other houses.

Can you believe I actually thought that! Let me tell you what’s different about my view now. After living here off and on for most of 2008 and continually since 2009, I’ve settled in and met and made friends with many of the people sheltered underneath those rooftops I once moaned about interfering with my view.

Thanks to days like this and people in the community who reach out to care each other in good weather and bad, I’ve had a chance to meet my neighbors and really learn what it means to be one. I’ve lived so many places in my life and I have become great friends with some people who lived close by, but there’s something different about living in a community as small as this where people come together in the pub, village hall, church and even the village shop.

Finding your own sense community can be difficult due to time and responsibilities. Most of us have too little of the first and too much of second, but if we’re open to looking at things a bit differently we might be surprised by how easy it can be to shift our perspective.

The other day when John was up on the roof working on the house, he encouraged me to climb up and have a look at the view. What I realized standing up there was how differently those rooftops look now that I know the people living beneath them and how much richer my life is for the closeness I feel not just in their physical proximity, but also in the kind way they’ve welcomed me into the community.

I’ve included a rooftop view to help illustrate my new perspective. What about you … is there anything in your life that could benefit from a shift in perspective?