Saw this made on tv and went and snatched the recipe.  I did it exactly according to directions, but have now made some changes, so I’m going to post the recipe here.  this was a delicious way to end a chilly day.

Broccoli Cheese Soup

2 T butter or margarine

2 pounds broccoli flourettes, roughly chopped into 1-inch pieces

1 medium onion, rough chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced or pressed

1 1/2 t. dry mustard

3-4 cups water

1/4 t. bakng soda

2 c. chicken broth

2 c. baby spinach

3/4 c. sharp cheddar cheese, grated

3/4 c. parmesan cheese, grated

Heat butter in large Dutch oven over medium-high heat.  When foaming subsides, add broccoli, onion, garlic and dry mustard.  Cook, stirring frequently, until fragrant, about 6 minutes.  Add 1 cup water with baking soda dissolved in it.  Bring to a simmer, cover, and cook until broccoli is very soft, about 20 minutes, stirring once or twice during cooking.

Add broth and 2 cups water and increase heat to medium-high.  When mixture begins to simmer, stir in spinach and cook until wilted, about 1 minute.

Transfer half of the soup mixture into a blender.  Add the cheese, and process until smooth, about 1 minute.  (I used my food processor, which worked, but didn’t make it completely smooth.)  Transfer soup to a boul and repeat with remaining soup.  Return all soup to Dutch oven, place over medium heat and bring to a simmer.  Adjust consistency of soup if needed (I left it thick) and salt and pepper to taste.

Serve hot with sprinkles of parmesan on top.

I read an interesting article in my local paper about an older couple that settled in my town after living and traveling all over the world.  One thing the woman said caught my ear, and it made me think about our move last year.  It might not have been to the other side of the world (this woman moved from South Africa to New Zealand and now to Longmont, CO), but it was a whole new world for me.  I left everything I knew, all my friends, the stores I was comfortable with, all of it.  The woman in the article said “I don’t want to do any more moving” and described her move as “traumatic.”

I can understand that completely.  I was excited about a new opportunity, about going to a place I had been in love with since I’d been a teenager.  But still.  We had to rip ourselves up by the roots, make hard decisions  about what we were going to take with us, and what needed to go.  Even now, more than a year later, I remember something I wish I’d kept instead of getting rid of, and look at something else I dragged across the country and wonder why I did that.

I wonder at what point the woman felt like she was home?  I know for me it’s about being able to run the washer.  When we moved a few months ago from the dreadful duplex to the amazing townhouse that I still love, I didn’t have a washer for three days.  I had sold the old one on Sunday, helping the guy load it into his truck.  And we didn’t move to the new place until Tuesday.  The movers were barely gone, and I had sorted laundry and started my first load.  I was home.

I’ve always been a bit of a Susie Homemaker type.  I like to cook, I like being at home.  And I like doing laundry.  Always have.  That big stack of clean clothes at the end of a day of doing laundry has always given me great satisfaction.  Those clothes smell good, they feel good.  It is nice to open a dresser drawer or closet door and know that I’ve got a dozen things to choose from to wear.

As long as I have a washing machine, I’m fine.  I can make do with lots of other things.  But give me my clean clothes.

I forget sometimes what a city boy Klown is.  For two weeks, I’ve talked about going to the Thresher’s show at the Dougherty Museum here in Longmont.  We live in a rural-ish area, surrounded by farms and ranches and horses and cattle and corn.  And I come from both city stock and country stock.  I’ve been to tractor shows and thresher’s shows before.  When I knew there was one nearby I knew I had to go.

Klown, on the other hand, had no idea what a thresher was.  Or what a Thresher’s Show was, for that matter. I  had to explain it to him.  Three times.  He was game to go, but didn’t really know what he was going to see.  And once we got there, I don’t think he realized there were that many tractors in our county.  All of them running.

The most interesting of the lot was a circa 1910’s diesel monster with huge iron wheels taller than me.  The entire tractor, which was nothing but metal upon metal, probably weighed close to 6 tons, and stood 14 feet high.  Three men were able to ride comfortably under it’s canopy.  We watched them trying to start it.  One cowboy in a plaid shirt and well-worn jeans was laying on the ground beneath it, fiddling with a giant wrench, while one Stetson-hatted cowboy was in in the cab, making adjustments.  Then there was the big guy at the crank, his greasy baseball cap a match for his greasy t-shirt, easily standing 6 foot 8 inches.  His meaty hands were on the crank, and his meaty arms gave the torque needed to turn the crank to fire up the old beast. We were told that it had not been run in 36 years. And it was having a difficult time starting.

After a few minutes, we moved on, and I walked around looking at orange Allis-Chalmers, red Farm-Alls, green and yellow John Deeres, shiny 50-year old International Harvesters, and gargantuan steam engine tractors by Cavery.  Then there were the smaller diesels; the crate-sized engine that was running a ringer-washer machine, tea-pot sized engines running kids play cars, and every type of rototiller, Gravelly mower, and garden tractor you could think of.  There was an ancient, rusty corn harvester, and balers, and every type of plow.  There were cowboys of every age and shape and size, from little guys with shiny boots up to the weathered old men with stooped shoulders and their best straw cowboy hat over pale plaid shirts, stiff new jeans, and boots with years of mud caked on them.  Every one of those cowboys walked with a kind of pride most people will never feel.  These are the men whose hard work and early morning make it possible for the rest of us to eat.

We were a hundred yards from that diesel monster when it finally started, and there was no missing it.  The ground shook, the air rumbled, and it coughed out a nice puff of black smoke.  Soon, it was moving, making its way out of its parking place and coming down the road that wound through the hundreds of green, gold, orange, red, and yellow tractors.  It dwarfed them all.  We all stood in awe to watch it pass, and the three cowboys on board couldn’t have been more proud.

I am proud of my country roots.  I feel bad that I didn’t teach my kids enough about those roots, even though they are pretty much city kids through and through.  Hopefully there will still be thresher’s shows for them to see when they are my age.

The diesel tractor.  It was huge.

Diesel Tractor in Motion

Nothing runs like a Deere.

As American as Apple Pie.

Cavery steam tractor.  We actually saw this one in motion, as well.  Beautiful restoration.

Case steam tractor.  It was one of three.

DoAll tractor.  The back wheels look vicious!

Allis-Chalmers tractor.  Interesting back wheels on this one too.

Tater-sized car!

This happens every year at this time.  A slow, peaceful summer of work suddenly turns into a raging rapid, and my boat is woefully under-staffed and under-supplied.  I think this year was worse because I decided to take vacation right as I knew it was going to get busy.

Not that I regret my vacation.  I certainly don’t!  We got to see family and friends, hang out in some of our favorite places, and take care of some business.  It was a good trip, eventful but not overwhelming, and we squeezed as much in as we could in the small space of time we had.  We drove back on Monday, and I went to work on Tuesday.  I should have stayed home.

As we approach the beginning of the semester, production moves into a critical stage.  I’m thankful that classes at my college start about a week later than everywhere else, which means I have an extra week to panic but also an extra week to get things done.  I’m hiring new student workers, trying to keep up with the influx of requests, and trying to shove completed materials out the door as fast as I can.  We are almost 100 books ahead of where we were at the same time last year.  That is good and bad, since this means that I’m doing a good job of getting students to respond to our requests, but also means the workload is doubled.  And it doubled in about a week’s time.  Exactly the week that I was gone.

Yay, us.

And to top that off, it appears that I have hurt myself.  I see the orthopedist tomorrow, and appointment that was scheduled weeks ago, to talk about what can be further done to my knee to get me into skiing shape.  I’ve been walking my 2.5 miles a day, every day with few exceptions, and feeling great.  The week we were in Missouri, I didn’t walk.  There was no good place to do it (I can’t walk on hard surfaces for that kind of mileage) and it would have been disruptive to the rest of the household.  I didn’t walk when I got back on Tuesday because I was still brain-dead.  Wednesday I suited up and headed to the green space, and within about 20 steps, realized something was wrong.  The lateral part of my left food hurts when I step on it, and I am getting what feels like cramps in my calf muscle.  My ankle is swollen, and if I press on the outside of it (like crossing my ankles) it hurts like blue blazes.  I can’t turn my foot inward at all.  I thought initially it was my plantar fasciitis coming back, but the pain is not in my heel, and PF doesn’t impact ankle movement.  I don’t know what I have, but I suspect some tendon damage somewhere, possibly peroneal tendonitis.  This would put a serious cramp in my walking regimen, as it requires immobilization and lots of rest.  Then some PT.  Actually, lots of PT.

I don’t have time to be hurt, for sure.  But I also want to keep walking, and if I am going to keep walking, I’m going to have to get this treated.  This is not one of those “no pain no gain” things; if I’ve truly done this damage to myself, I need to fix it.  It will not go away on its own.  Kind of like my knees.

I’m glad I have a sit-down job, and that I can sometimes do my job from home.  But still.  Don’t wanna!

My dad is one of the strongest, meanest people I know.  I say that with all respect and love.  He’s my dad.

When we were growing up, he was a dog person.  We had two little black dogs over the years.  I had several cats, but he was not amused by them.  Heck, he didn’t even tolerate them.  They were indoor-outdoor cats, mostly outdoor, and he was not sad when they were no more.  And I can understand that.  Cats are not for everyone.  Even now, as the owner of two cats, I’m not always amused by them.  They are not necessarily amused by me, either, which makes us even, I suppose.

But my dad has become a cat person.  Not exactly “crazy cat lady” cat person, but he has two cats.  Technically, one of the cats belongs to his wife, my step mom.  But the person petting that cat, giving that cat treats, letting it lick the vanilla ice cream off the Klondike Bar Wrapper, that is my dad. Samantha, a smoky grey rather elderly cat, spends her nights sitting in his lap, letting him endlessly pet her head.

Samantha, the elderly cat.

A few months ago they added another cat to the harem.  Sibley is about 2 years old, about half the size of a normal cat, and plays like a kitten.  She has the prettiest eyes, and a slightly flat face.  Her eyes are very expressive, like she’s wearing makeup or something.  Tater has had a blast “cat-fishing” with a piece of string.  Sibley runs and runs and doesn’t seem to get tired.  She’s adorable.

And my dad adores her.  He looks for her, pets her, talks to her.  And this is so not like my dad.  I’m glad to see he does have a softer side.  Even if it took a couple of kitty-kats to bring it out.

Sibley, who is really a very pretty cat, despite the fact that she looks a little mean here.

My daughters and I went to the Boulder County Fair yesterday.  I thought it would be big, but it was mostly small.  And that was pretty much okay.  There were pigs and chickens and goats and cows, a rodeo, a steam-engine tractor, corn dogs and frozen bananas and french fries, and a demolition derby.  There was also a small carnival, about six rides or so, and lots of those “give us your money and we might give you a prize” games that no one ever wins a prize from.

And inside the exhibit hall, there were pickles and cakes and slices of pie and quilts and photographs and giant zucchinis.

We did not go to the fair last year, as we had just moved here and I was completely buried in boxes to unpack, a new job to figure out, and an impending visit from my mother.  I’m glad we went this year, even though it wasn’t as big as I thought it would be.

Seeing the entries in the garden and fresh produce areas makes me want to enter something next year.  Same with the photographs.  As you know, I take a lot of pictures.  Hundreds every month, actually.  Some are really good, and why shouldn’t I try to get a blue ribbon for what I love to do?

We had incredibly good weather, reaching only a high of 82 degrees or so (after our long string of 90’s and 100’s) so it was a perfect day to spend at the fair.

First Place Rhode Island Red rooster.  He was crowing his head off!

St. Louis will always be my hometown, although I feel completely at home now in Colorado after a year.  This week, my daughters and I are piling in the car and heading back to Missouri for a visit.  Klown has to work so will be staying here.  I actually have mixed feelings about going home, which is odd, I suppose.

On one hand, it will be nice to see family and friends again, and visit some of my old haunts and hangouts.  There will be dinner at the Chinese buffet (Chinese food here in Colorado is not good), dessert at Ted Drewes at least once, a day spent with my son and in our old neighborhood.  There will be barbecue with my dad and at least one of my brothers, and lots of hanging out time with my bffs Ardi and Cheri.

The Missouri weather has been horrible this year, very dry and extremely hot.  It has been dry and hot here in Colorado, too, but since about the second week of July we’ve been in monsoon, with almost daily afternoon showers, despite the hot temperatures.  All of the locals tell me it has been unusual here, and I believe them.  This week’s forecast for Missouri actually looks decent, with temps in the 80’s instead of 100’s.  Ironically, it will be hotter in Colorado while I’m gone.

But fall is coming.  Yesterday our morning low was 50 degrees.  Today it was 51 degrees.  We will get hot again, into the 90’s, but when the nighttime temps can get that cool, it is bearable.  In a month we’ll be wearing long pants and a jacket in the mornings.  Well, not me, I hardly ever wear a jacket, but most people will be.  I always joke that I don’t get cold.  I only get hot.  And hotter.

So, I’m looking forward to heading back to Missouri for a visit, and not looking forward to the 14 hour drive.  But it is what it is, right?  And it will be great to see family and friends.

About 8 weeks ago, I embarked on a routine of walking in the morning before work.  The first week, I walked four days, the next week five, and since then, with only two exceptions, I’ve walked 7 days a week.  The exception weeks I only walked 6 days instead of 7.

Those first couple of weeks I walked around a lake on a circuit that was 1.2 miles.  I could walk that in 20 minutes, even out of breath, and soon found a new place to walk that gave me a 2.5 mile trail.  I have bad knees and hips, so finding green space to walk that doesn’t have concrete walkways is important.  The green space I walk is full of lakes and the trail is dirt covered in sandy, tiny gravel.  And goose poop.  Lots of goose poop.

I’m 51 years old.  I’m fat.  I’ve been fat since I was 12 or so.  There was a lot of yo-yoing in those early years, while my mother and I tried diet after diet.  I was a relatively active kid; I swam and worked for the YMCA, and one whole summer I rode my bike 6 miles a day home from one of my lifeguard gigs.  As I got to college, though,  became much more sedentary.  I still dieted, with little effect.  At age 25, I gave up diets in favor of just living life.

Since then, I’ve probably not been so greatly fit, but I have not gained or lost a significant amount of weight.  I go up and down by 20 pounds here and there, but never go over my “top weight” and often am 30-40 pounds below that.  I am healthy in that I have no diabetes, my cholesterol is normal and even a bit on the low side, and my blood pressure falls within the normal range.  Any health problems I have are pretty much concentrated in my knees and my lungs.  I’ve had pneumonia a lot (fourteen times) and two knee surgeries.  So I have low-level asthma with minimal triggers, and creaky, painful knees.  I do take high blood pressure medicine to keep my ibuprofen-irritated blood pressure under control.  If I didn’t take the ibuprofen, I would not be able to move my knees.

My only reason for starting to walk was to give my knees all the help they could get.  I am seeing an orthopedist in August about my continuing knee issues, and I wanted to be sure that I had strengthened all of the surrounding muscles to the best of my ability.  I firmly believe in the concept of Healthy At Any Size, but that means I have to do my best to be healthy in the first place.  I do eat a varied and reasonable diet, but I also don’t deny a craving when it comes, and do not believe in starving.  In fact, I (and scientists) now know that diets don’t work because they starve the body.  Moderate eating of healthy foods, getting plenty of rest and reasonable exercise, are more important than weight loss.

But after eight weeks of walking every day, you would think I could stop hating it.  But I do hate it.  I hate sweating.  I’ve always hated sweating.  And my right knee hurts.  It hurts with every single step.  All this walking has not made it any easier for me to climb the stairs from the garage to the house when I get home from my walks, and trips up the stairs to bed at night are near agony.  When I get done walking, instead of feeling invigorated and awake, I feel tired and hungry.  I keep waiting for that “runner’s high” thing I keep hearing about. I walk faster than I did before, without getting winded.  I walk the 2.5 miles in about 35 minutes, which is a pretty good speed.  I have more stamina to do things like  yard work, and I’m sleeping a bit less than I was, although I’m not sure that’s a good thing.  Going from 7 hours a night to 6 hours a night is probably not the right direction.  I breathe easier, and if I need to hurry across a street I don’t feel like I’m going to die when I’m done.

I do what I can to make it interesting, since I really don’t like doing it.  I have my iPod fully stocked with music, and I turn it on and walk.  Those first few weeks, I tried to pick bouncy music that would force me to walk at a pace, but sometimes that pace is a bit too much.  I let my knee pain be the judge of that.  Sometimes I just want to be soothed while I walk, and I’ll listen to some piano music or new age stuff.  When I want to walk hard, I turn on rock, or some hot Spanish guitar music (Rodrigo y Gabriela is my usual choice).  It is something to pass the time, at least.  Sometimes I spend the entire walk staring at the ground, trying to figure out all the animal prints I see on my trail.  The shorter walk I did initially was closer to the mountains, and I saw bear tracks.  The longer walk has mostly goose tracks, horse hooves, dog tracks, and an incredible array of tennis shoe tracks.  Sometimes there’s the track of a bicycle tire or stroller wheels.  And the other day there were deer tracks.  So far, no bear, no cat, no elk.  And that’s fine by me, since I am walking in the early morning and don’t really wish to encounter any of those things.

I will keep walking, as much as I hate it.  I breathe better.  I have more stamina in general.  I don’t have problems walking longer distances as I need to throughout the day.  Even if I can’t climb stairs any better than I could before, there are other benefits.  Maybe, someday, I actually will be able to go hiking.  And skiing.

After all, I do live in one of those places where I should be doing these things!

Colorado has just experienced one of those unthinkable tragedies.  The kind that completely paralyze people in the short-term, and alter their very lifestyles in the long-term.  On Friday, just after midnight, a heavily armored and armed man entered a theater full of people watching a new movie that had just been released, and began shooting.

12 people, including a six year old child, were killed.  58 more were wounded.  Almost three days later, 26 of those people remain in the hospital with 9 of them in critical or grave condition.

I am old enough that I have lived through many of these unthinkable tragedies.  The assassination of President Kennedy.  The murders of Olympic athletes at the 1972 games.  The shuttle Challenger disaster. The Columbine School shootings.  September 11th.  The Oklahoma Federal Building bombing.  David Koresh and the Waco fire.

And no matter how many times you live through one of these events, you are stunned by the audacity of the attack and the attacker(s), stunned by the loss of life, and derailed by the loss of a feeling of safety.

I don’t do midnight movies, and I don’t do premiers.  I’ve often lived by the adage that nothing good ever happens after midnight.  The likelihood that I would have been in such a place at such a time is pretty small.  But the reality is, every one of these types of tragedies that happens is a place where normal, everyday people might be.  People like me, like my kids.  There is no truly “safe” place for anyone, even in a country where we have presumably some of the most broadly allowed freedoms in the entire world.

And yet, Friday morning, I was on my way to my usual morning walk, having just heard the news of the shootings, the sun was still coming up over the horizon, the birds were singing, the geese were swimming.  People were going to work, the clerks in the grocery stores were ringing up purchases, planes were taking off and landing from my local airport, and there were six hot air balloons in the air over my county, as there are every single morning.  The world continues to turn, the days continue to pass, the sun rises and sets, and life goes on.

When things like this happen, you wonder, if only for a few brief minutes, how the world can go on.  How life can continue.  But it does.  We move on.  We don’t know any other way.

This past weekend, I had the great pleasure of being able to host a dear friend from St. Louis.  We only had two days, so we had to make the most of it!  She was not a stranger to the Rocky Mountains, she had been here before several times with her husband and kids, but that didn’t matter.  I am now a local.  I can see things (and explain things) differently.

We ended up with a perfectly gorgeous day in the mountains, which is rather rare here.  You never know what the weather in the mountains is going to do, and it is not unusual this time of year to have afternoon thunderstorms.  But we headed up early, to beat traffic and road closures (one road of the park is undergoing extensive restructuring) and got in the park before 9 a.m.  We headed straight up Trail Ridge Road, vowing to get to the continental divide.  Before going a half a mile into the park we saw deer and wild turkey.  Later we would see marmots, elk, and chipmunks.  We stopped often to take pictures, and ate lunch at one of the highest points we reached.  We visited the gift shop at 11,700 feet.  We saw snow, and green grass, and colorful wildflowers.  The vegetation above the tree line has only 2 or 3 months to complete its life cycle, so it is in a big hurry to do so.

I’m including some pictures below.  Many more will be shared in the next two weeks on the 365-Degree Blog.  Make sure you check it out!

The view from 10,000 feet, looking eastward.

Tater looking contemplative.

Yellow wild flowers.

Me in front of the Trail Ridge Road store sign.

Me on the hiking trail.

My camera even on sport setting isn’t quite fast enough to catch this guy…but it’s a decent picture anyway!