Food for Thought: Apricot Jam and Chicken

We built our house 17 years ago, but it took us a little longer to get the yard in. My sweetie loves to plant things. We spent a fortune during those first couple of years putting in trees and shrubs. I thought it was done, but my sweetie seemed to think there was always room for one more tree. That’s how I ended up with three trees in the middle of my front lawn. So one day he brought home a small apricot tree. It was a pathetic-looking thing and my sweetie assured me it probably wouldn’t survive. His idea was to plant it on the corner of the sandpile.

Now we don’t have an ordinary sandpile. When we planned our backyard, the landscaper miscalculated the amount of sand we needed and didn’t realize it until we had four times too much sand sitting on our driveway! Unfortunately they wouldn’t haul away the extra sand so we were stuck building a retaining wall and making a ginormous sandpile in our backyard. My sweetie says the wall is 35’ x 35’ with 8 inches of sand at one end sloping to 24 inches deep at the other. All told we have 1200 square feet of sand! It takes up a huge area of the backyard and we have a shed and playground equipment on top of it. It also borders our garden which is a pain in the butt because the garden likes to throw weeds over the retaining wall and then I have to weed the sandpile as well as the garden.

Google Maps satellite image. All the trees along the left fence are also ours.

Anyway, back to planting that silly apricot tree. I really didn’t want the tree by the sandpile. If by some miracle it did grow, it would drop apricots and leaves all over the place. Just what we needed, sand that is mushy with more than plain water! But I didn’t win. My sweetie laughed and said it would never get that big, apricots just don’t do well in the Salt Lake Valley…but he was wrong. It’s huge! In a good year we get 5 or 6 five-gallon buckets of apricots and that doesn’t count the ones that fall off the tree into the sandpile where they germinate and shoot up tiny little apricot trees that I have to dig up every year. It’s a good thing my mom taught me how to make jam because you can only throw so many at the neighbor’s dog. (Just kidding, Michelle, I don’t throw any at your dogs.)

So today I’m going to give you two recipes (because my little recipe tab looks so sad with just one recipe on it). The first one is for Apricot Jam, but if you don’t have access to apricots (or paper-cots as Curly calls them) you can buy apricot preserves to make the second recipe which is Apricot Chicken. I love this recipe because it is so easy and tasty! Give them a try and let me know what you think.  

Apricot Jam
5 cups prepared fruit
½ cup lemon juice
1 box pectin
8 cups sugar
¼ tsp butter or margarine
 
Pit unpeeled apricots. Finely chop or grind fruit. 
Measure exactly 5 cups prepared fruit into a large saucepan. Stir in lemon juice. Stir pectin into prepared fruit in pan. Add butter to reduce foaming. 

Bring mixture to full rolling boil on high heat, stirring constantly. Stir in sugar. Return to full rolling boil and boil exactly 4 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Skim off foam. 

Ladle into prepared jars, filling to within 1/8 inch of tops. Wipe jar rims and threads. Cover with 2-piece lids. Water bath for 10 minutes. 

 Apricot Chicken
 
Chicken Breasts
Apricot Jam

Cook chicken breasts in frypan on medium heat until done (approximately 10 minutes). 

Spoon apricot jam in generous amounts on each breast. Let it drizzle down into the frypan.

 Reduce heat and cook for about 5 minutes until jam is turned to liquid. 

 
Serve over cooked rice. Make sure you drizzle some of the cooked jam into your rice. Leftovers are excellent cut into a green salad!

Autism: Cluster 1st - 3rd grade

This is part five of this story.  If you are new and want to catch up click here.

That light never did turn on. I cried at the Kindergarten graduation. I wasn’t sure that any teacher could teach my little Dog Walker as much as "Miss Miotten." He was moved into a cluster class for 1^st grade. That meant that resource students in grades 1 through 3 were all in the same class. Many of them had communicative disorders like our son, but that was just a "catch all" for the ones who had yet to be labeled. 

 
First grade was hard! His teacher was in her last year before retirement and she was relentless. It was good for our little guy to learn to work hard. I wouldn’t necessarily throw us in the really bad parents’ category but we had not asked much of him other than learning to speak. We often gave in to his tantrums just to keep peace. We didn’t assign him chores like we did the other kids, and we rewarded him often for small achievements. His brother and sisters were not happy with this favoritism and it caused many conflicts and complaints at home. I can’t say I was sad to see that teacher go. 

His 2^nd grade teacher was younger and seemed more dedicated to the students. She insisted that it was time to test our sweet boy. The stacks of paperwork came home again. I spent hours poring over them, hoping that we would finally understand his diagnosis. As I read the tests this time, the light turned on…not for him…for me. I could clearly see where the tests were leading. His teacher must have known too, because she gave me several different tests I hadn’t seen before and they all pointed to one answer: Autism. 

My sweetie and I met with the teacher on a cold winter morning for Parent/Teacher Conferences. Our son was happy to play with the toys on the floor as we chatted. He had grown so much since he first started preschool! Now, at eight years old, he was finally starting to learn how to hold a real conversation. He still could not read facial expressions or understand simple instructions. He did not make eye contact; he looked at my mouth when I talked to him. 

As we sat in our meeting, my sweetie heard the Autism word for the first time. His first reaction was denial and I could see the anger building inside him. He did not want our son to wear a label for the rest of his life. I understood how he felt, but I could also see that just taking away the label didn’t make it not be true. We rode home in silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts. I’m not exactly sure what he was thinking, but I was trying to figure out our next move. We really couldn’t afford a private school for Autism although there is a very good one right here in our valley. 

As it turned out, the answer was to leave him right where he was, in the cluster class. But the questions of what to do beyond that kept me awake at nights. All my hopes and dreams for my precious son were shattered…would he ever go to college? Or even graduate from high school? What about marriage, a family, a career? Were these things even possible for him? What next?  


Jump to part 6.

Dogs (part 3)

Catch up on part one here.

So I grabbed my son-in-law who isn’t scared of dogs (as opposed to my sweetie who still has nightmares about being trapped in the closet by a maniacal dust mop) and my autistic soon-to-be-dog-owner son and we headed for the animal shelter. I had never been in the dog part of the shelter before…what a ruckus! Dogs of all shapes, sizes, and colors were barking and yapping and howling. There was a blue heeler that was jumping five feet off the ground – straight up! I quickly steered my son to the other side of the compound, there was no way I was putting up with that. 

Blue Heelers can jump amazingly high just google it.

We walked past cage after cage, some with single dogs, and others with half a dozen noisy canines. A pit bull, a yorkie, hounds, and labs all clamoring for attention, affection, and adoption. I must say I was totally overwhelmed! My son wasn’t faring much better…he had both hands clasped tightly over his ears. Only Gamer held it together. He stopped at several cages, greeting dogs and trying to make friends. He finally made a choice for us and we got the dog out of the cage. After a few minutes in the yard with that particular make and model, it became obvious that it was not the right fit. 

We took it back and again started up and down the aisles. A medium-sized brown dog with velvety ears and short hair caught my attention. I think it’s because she seemed to be the only dog in the place with her head down. Her big brown eyes stared at us, and surprisingly, she was not making a sound. I looked at the tag on her cage…name: Diamond, age: 2 years, housebroken, and then: Pit Bull. "No way!" I said to Gamer as he looked at me expectantly. "I’ve heard about pit bulls. They are fighting dogs and we have lots of little kids." He rolled his eyes at me. "Let’s just get her out and see," he suggested. "Fine," I mumbled. Honestly, I didn’t see anything any better. This was all starting to seem like such a bad idea. We took the dog out into the yard. 

She liked both boys and didn’t seem to mind me either. They played catch and fetch and just chased around. After about half an hour we took her back inside. A kind worker led us into a small amphitheater and told us to take all the time we needed. I turned to my small son. "Do you like this dog?" I asked. He thought a minute. Then he signed the letters for Y-E-S. "Maybe you need to say a prayer," I suggested. "Let’s see if Heavenly Father agrees with this choice." I figured He was the one repeating the message in my ear until I finally heard it so I wanted to make sure we were getting the dog He was recommending. I helped my little guy with a short sweet prayer. "She’s good…" he said and smiled at me. Gamer was all business. "Let’s go then," he said. 

We gathered our things, stopped at the counter to pay, and suddenly I was a dog owner again. That was six years ago and that dog still drives me nuts! She doesn’t obey any better than the kids do. They often forget to feed her (so of course she complains to me) and when they do she pushes her food bowl into the laundry mountain and then I end up picking mushy dog food out of my washer. She poops all over the yard and they aren’t small! We got in trouble with the neighbors because of her barking, and we had a run-in with the city when they found out she was supposed to be a pit bull. Animal Control came over to tell us that pit bulls weren’t allowed in our city. But after one look at her they reclassified her as a lab mix. She is gentle and forgiving when the kids climb all over her. She only bit somebody once, but that’s a story for another time. I guess we’ll keep her…but don’t be getting the impression that I’m happy about it!

She is camera shy too.

Dancing with the Stars

Every once in a while an opportunity comes along in our lives for something that is just amazingly cool! That happened to us last spring. You all know that I have a bunch of dancers in my family (I’m not sure why, I have two left feet. I don’t even have natural grace on the basketball court.) Princess and the Prima Donna are both on pointe (which is a fancy way of saying they can officially dance on their toes). The Dog Walker even dances in a ballet once a year, need it or not. Sport takes a boys’ ballet class once a week and is about to make his debut in a real ballet in a couple of weeks. But this is a story about Crafty. 

At 10 years old, she has been dancing for most of her life and I mean that literally. When she was barely two, she and I would sit at the dance studio and watch Princess and Prima Donna take creative ballet and tap classes. She wasn’t so interested in the ballet, but she loved the tap! So I gave her an old pair of tap shoes that no longer fit the other girls and she started wearing them to the studio. It wasn’t long before she was trying to mimic the steps while the other girls danced. Soon the teacher noticed and suggested that she just join the class (all of the other girls were between the ages of 4 and 6). We bought her a tiny costume and she performed in the Spring Recital with all of those other kids. She was perfectly in step with the teacher the entire time even though her shoes were about three sizes too big. They didn't even make shoes small enough to fit her tiny feet. 

Fast forward a few years. They had an audition for a show that was to take place in a major venue on the Wasatch Front. No, it was not the Nutcracker and Ballet West, Princess did that. This was an exclusive show with the Transfusion Hype group. They needed about 5 kids to perform a hip-hop dance in their show. Crafty auditioned for one of the parts and beat out both of her older sisters. She was 8 years old and performing with adults in a show that cost $16.00/ticket. They filled the house every evening of the performance so I guess people thought it was worth the money. 

Transfusion Hype

Back to last spring…someone approached our studio looking for girls who were willing to participate in a music video. Crafty’s class was chosen and she was about to become famous. They spent many hours in rehearsal and then finally in filming. Sadly, some of the girls were not allowed to dance but were filmed watching the other girls. Since we are still trying to be incognito, I can’t tell you which one is my little Crafty, but you can probably figure it out on your own since (in my humble opinion) she is the best dancer! Take a minute and watch this fun music video made for a real band as it appears on YouTube. We think she is amazingly cool.