Sami's Birthday - Observed

Yes, Sami's Official Birthday was April 19th. However, it was inconveniently timed, so like a president Sami's birthday got moved around the calendar to Friday the 20th. We decided to have a barbecue at home and show off our house and backyard now that the weather is getting nicer.

Sunday the 21st was Sami's friend Edris' bithday, so we decided to make it a double celebration. Sami ordered the rhubarb pie shown in the previous post and Edris requested tiramisu. Neither Sami or I had ever made tiramisu before so it was kind of scary. I didn't think lady fingers were supposed to be so hard, they were crumbling everywhere. Anyway, Sami did most of the work for the tiramisu, I just brushed coffee on the lady fingers and put them in layers.

Everyone said the tiramisu was good. Both the rhubarb pies we made and most of the tiramisu was gone.

Sami rolled out the ground beef with a rolling pin and made uniformly round burgers, perfectly sized for the buns. Unfortunately, burgers shrink when they get grilled, so there was a bit of a "where's the beef?" moment.

Anyway, there was a good group of people, some friends from my work with at the library and Sami's usual group from Intel. Edris had requested a "competition", but wasn't specific. I set up the badminton/volleyball net in the yard, but it got dark soon after everyone arrived so we didn't end up playing. We all had a good time and we're looking forward to more get-togethers this summer.

Rhubarb Pie

Sami has requested rhubarb pie for his birthday. This is one of our favorite recipes. Right now we don't have enough of our own rhubarb growing to make a pie, but we're hoping to have lots later this summer.

Crust

1 Stick margarine
1/2 cup sugar*
1 egg
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

Filling

4 cups rhubarb pieces (peeled)
1/2 cup sugar*
1 tablespoon potato starch
cinnamon
ginger
mint

Preheat oven to 400 F

Whip margerine and sugar. Add egg to mixture. Mix the baking powder with the flour, and add slowly to wet ingredinets. Pour/spread in pie dish, shaping dough into a piecrust.

Boil half of the rhubarb pieces with sugar until soft. Remove from heat and mix potato starch with 2 tablespoons water and add to filling. Add reserved rhubarb pieces to mixture and bring to boil. Remove from heat, add cinnamon, ginger and mint.

Pour filling into crust, brush with egg if desired. Bake for 20 mins at 400 F.


*1/2 sugar may be replaced with splenda. Or additional sugar may be added if a sweeter pie is desired.

So Cute!

Look at the view from my hammock today!



Bushtit - Psaltriparus minimus

The results are in...

...and the winner is Sara's desktop PC! Sara's (AMD-based) PC consumes 147 watts (10-day average); almost three times more than our fridge. At our current 9c/kWh that's about $115 per year.

Next I'll test my own PC... scary...

Google Says What ?? !!

Sami sent me the following forward today. His coworker Carol always sends truly funny forwards. Don't read any of the comments before trying it. They may give away the surprise.

Take 60 seconds to do this. I guarantee you will show someone else - it's too funny not to.

1. Go to www.google.com

2. Click on "maps"

3. Click on Google maps then at the top of the page click "get directions"

4. Type " New York " in the first box (the "from" box)

5. Type " London " in the second box (the "to" box) and hit search maps

6. Scroll down to step #23