PERFECT PECAN PIE

Some of you have requested that I blog my recipe for my pecan pie.  This is my mother-in-law's recipe and I just want to tell you that I think she is one of the best cooks I know.  She has always inspired me to be a better cook.  Every thing she makes is just the best thing you have ever tasted.  Here's a funny story:
Every year we would go to my mother-in-laws house for Thanksgiving.  My parents lived in either Kentucky, or later  Utah and it was too far for us to go for Thanksgiving.  My mom-in-law's Thanksgiving dinners were just the absolute best you ever had seen.  One year, my youngest son, Rintor was anxiously awaiting Thanksgiving.  He had been hearing about his school's Thanksgiving dinner that they served for lunch a week or so before Thanksgiving.  The day finally came and he could hardly wait to get to school.  That day he came home; he looked a little down.  I asked him, "How was the Thanksgiving dinner?"  He said, "It wasn't very good.  Everyone said it was so good, but it wasn't.  It wasn't as good as Grandma's."  I told him, "No one's Thanksgiving dinner is as good as Grandma's."  :0)  Here's her recipe for pecan pie, that I have renamed:
PERFECT PECAN PIE
3 eggs, slightly beaten
2 Tbl. melted butter
3 Tbl. flour
1 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups lt. Karo syrup
2/3 cup chopped pecans
1 unbaked pie shell
- Beat eggs, blend in butter, flour, vanilla, salt, sugar and syrup.  Mix well so sugar can dissolve.  Add pecans.  Pour into pie shell.  Bake in preheated oven at 425 degrees for 10 minutes.  Reduce temperature to 325 degrees.  Bake 40-45 minutes longer.  You can cover the edges of the pie shell with aluminum foil so the edges don't get too brown and uncover them the last 10 minutes.  My mom-in-law says she never covers the edges.  If you use pecans that you have had in your freezer, make sure they are at room temperature before you add them.  If you use a frozen pie crust, make sure it has thawed before you use it.  If you have any problem with this setting up, my sister-in-law says to just use 4 eggs instead of 3. 

A PERFECT BIRTHDAY?

For my husband's birthday Monday, I TRIED to get him to do some fun things.  Here's what we did (according to what HE wanted to do): 

1) Got up and went to McDonalds for breakfast, but went through the drive-thru and brought it home.
2) Went to Home Depot and bought concrete so he could pour a concrete patch over the septic tank (he poured it on Wednesday).
3) Ate leftover hamburger, brats, potato salad, baked beans, and melon from Saturday night's cook-out for lunch.
4) He went out and got the septic tank "prepped" and ready to pour concrete.
5) Went to Hastings and bought "The Tourist" on dvd, plus some good westerns we found on sale for $5.99 and $7.99.
6) Went through the drive-thru of Panda Express for dinner and brought it home and watched "The Tourist".  (btw, it was really good!)

That night he told me, "Thanks for making my birthday so nice!"  I said, "And here I am feeling bad that your birthday was so boring!"  I tried to get him to go to a restaurant but all he wanted was Panda drive-thru!  We were also going to go to the movies but there was nothing worth seeing.  We had wanted to see "The Tourist" and had several people tell us it was really good, so I decided we should just go buy it - lots cheaper than going to the movies and we got to see something we wanted to see!

Oh, and by the way,  I've been having a really hard time for YEARS trying to make a good pecan pie.  He always wants pecan pie for his birthday and Father's Day.  Every year I make one.  Every year it is crap.  Finally this year I even prayed about it.  I made a pie using the Lion House recipe.  Didn't turn out.  Finally I thought and thought about it.  I finally got the idea that because I was using frozen nuts and frozen pie crust and not letting them thaw out first, is the reason it wasn't turning out.  I decided to make one more pie the afternoon we were having our family party.  YAY!  It turned out PERFECT!  I mean P.E.R.F.E.C.T!!!!
I also wondered if something else that had happened had anything to do with it.  The recipe calls for 3 eggs.  At the grocery store all the large eggs were all cracked, so I bought jumbo eggs.  I cracked the first egg, it was a double yolk.  I cracked the second egg, it was a double yolk too.  The third egg was just a single yolk.  Now my sister-in-law says she has problems with my mother-in-law's recipe too and she just adds an extra egg.  So now I wonder if the next time I make it I need to remember to not use frozen nuts and pie shells, but to also put in an extra egg? 

KINDNESS

I was called to be a Cubmaster last December.  My first Pack meeting was Pinewood Derby.  My second Pack meeting was Blue & Gold Banquet.  Finally this month is a regular old Pack meeting.  The value this month is "Compassion" so I found some quotes on kindness and compassion and I made several into banners to put on the walls.  Then I printed the rest on squares of paper and each boy will read one after he gets his earned award  or badge. I thought these quotes were so good, I decided to share them:

"Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love." - Mother Teresa

"Spread love everywhere you go.  Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier." - Mother Teresa

"Treat everyone with politeness, even those who are rude to you - not because they are nice, but because you are." - Author Unknown

"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.  If you want to be happy, practice compassion." - Dalai Lama

"I always prefer to believe the best of everybody, it saves so much trouble." - Rudyard Kipling

"Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see." - Mark Twain

"Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it form themselves." - James Matthew Barrie

"The best way you can knock the chip off your neighbor's shoulder is to pat him on the back. " - Author Unknown

"You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Kindness,, like a boomerang, always returns." - Author Unknown

"You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you."
- John Wooden

"Don't wait for people to be friendly, show them how." - Author Unknown

"How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the week and strong.  Because someday in your life you will have been all of these." - George Washington Carver

"Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not." - Samuel Johnson

"The best portion of a good man's life - his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love." - William Wordsworth

"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around." - Leo Buscalglia

"Make it a practice to judge persons and things in the most favorable light at all times and under all circumstances." - Saint Vincent de Paul

"There are no traffic jams when you go the extra mile." - Zig Ziglar

"I expect to pass through life but once.  If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to my fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again." - William Penn

FLUSHING IT OUT

More on the Septic Tank Saga:

My husband ordered 11 five gallon buckets of this bio-safe bacteria for septic tanks.  We got it this week and he put 3 five gallon buckets down there yesterday.  Next week he'll put 3 more five gallon buckets down and then the 3rd week he'll put the rest.  They guarantee this 99%, so I hope it works.  He's also been digging more and found the clog in the drainage pipes where it goes to the leech (leach?) field.  Big clogs of toliet paper.  So it looks like we're going to have to switch paper too. :0+  Maybe my parents' idea of not putting any toliet paper down their septic tank isn't such a bad idea after all.  (actually it is a gross idea, so never mind). 

In the meantime, we ordered a new front-loading washer and dryer Friday morning and it will be here Monday morning.  We got a pretty good deal on it.  I got stainless steel.  We bought the pedestals that the washer and dryer sit on too.  Here's a tip to those of you who have the front-loaders but don't have the pedestals:  I guess a lot of people don't buy the pedestals because they are so expensive.  (We felt like we were getting such a good deal on the washer that we went ahead and got the pedestals.)  Anyway, I was at Home Depot the other day and they had all these LG pedestals on sale for $80.  They are regularly $200 or more.  They had mostly white and stainless steel, but they had a couple of red ones too.  I also heard that Best Buy had some pedestals on clearance too.  So check it out!  We got a GE washer and dryer.  I didn't know if the GE would fit the LG pedestals or not, so I didn't get any from there. 

Another good thing is that when we moved into this house and had new tile put in the kitchen, dining and laundry rooms, my husband took off all the baseboards...and never put them back on.  One reason he hadn't put them back on is because we kept talking about remodeling our kitchen (but haven't done it yet).  Anyway, since we were moving the washer and dryer out today to make room for the new ones, he decided to go to Home Depot and buy new baseboards and put them in the laundry room and bathroom.  Woo-Hoo!  We also bought some for the living room.   The living room has baseboards, but all the other baseboards he has put in the house look so nice, I wanted the ones in the living room changed, since they are just the standard boring baseboards that came with the house.  A few months ago he put new ones in Bab's old bedroom and the hallway when we painted that bedroom.  Now all we have left to do is the master bedroom and bath, the kitchen, the other guest room, and his office.  :0) 

STILL FLUSHING $$$

Well, it's been 2 1/2 weeks since I wrote my last post, "FLUSHING MONEY DOWN THE TOLIET" and we've only taken a baby step.  :0+  We put a 5 gallon bucket of bacteria stuff down the septic tank and have flushed packets of it down every toliet almost every day.  It's draining, but very, very slowly.  Last weekend I tended my grandkids while Gilbert Girl and her husband went away for the weekend.  I went to her house on Friday morning so she could leave, and I took most of my wash with me and did laundry all day while I watched the boys and while the girls were at school.  That really helped.  We are still showering every day, and I have to do a load of dishes at least once a week.  Today I had to do another load of laundry.  In the meantime, my husband is ordering 10 more 5-gallon buckets.  He talked to the guy today and the guy said that if one bucket didn't fix it, then it was in worse shape than he thought.  He also said that if we don't get the septic tank going, it will contaminate our water well.  By putting the 10 buckets of stuff down it (and they guaranteed it will work 99%) it will basically clean all the soil in and around the septic tank.  It's either that or dig a new septic system $$$$$$$$$, or have city sewers put in $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.

So some good things and some bad things have come from this.  The bad thing is that I am going to have to change a lot of my soaps and detergents.  When we got the bacteria stuff, they also sent a sheet with a list of good products to use with septic tanks.  I found out that everything I use is bad, such as:  We use Dove bar soap and now we will switch to Oil of Olay bar soap.  I have been using Cascade or Finish -now I have to switch temporarilly to an eco-friendly dishwasher soap and then once it the septic system starts working again, I can switch back.  I use Pine-Sol on my floors and have to switch to Mr. Clean.  I have to quit using Oxy-clean in my white laundry.  We have to quit using anti-bacterial liquid hand soap and go back to regular hand soap, and get this:  they said to use a fruit based soap.  Does that mean Bath and Body Works liquid soaps?(woo-hoo!)  I'll have to check.  Basically I can't use anything with sodium or phosphate or bleach or amonia in it.  Thank goodness it did say I can use Murphy's Oil soap still on my wood floors. 

Okay, that was the bad.  Here's the good :0) :  My husband has decided that to help the septic system "get better" faster, we need to use less water.  So he said I could go buy one of those front-loading hi-efficiency washing machines.  I told him if I bought the washer, I needed to buy the dryer to match, because if I didn't and waited till my dryer went out and then went to buy one, it wouldn't match.  So he said ok.  :0D

See?  Good things come to those who wait....and not whine.  :0)