Team Fornari Blogging

The Answers!

2007-08-20T20:17:00.000-07:00

Thank you all for waiting patiently for explanations of the photos. Here are a few corresponding pictures that will help clear things up.

The first picture was of porcupine quills that we pulled out of this unfortunate canine. :(
We pulled over 50 quills out of her. The poor dog doesn't look like she's having fun.

The Wilson's well couldn't handle the load of eleven extra people, so we went to the river almost every night to wash our hair. It was actually pretty fun!

While we were in Idaho freeloading off the Wilson's, we decided to make ourselves useful for a change; so we painted their garage. While I was spraying the eaves I got a cool free powder job. :)

Thats all for now. I am still working on loading the pictures to a web album.

-Caleb

We're Alive!

2007-08-13T20:49:00.000-07:00

Hey Ya'll. Believe it or not, the Fornari's are STILL ALIVE! Yeah, you heard that right. We really are alive and doing well. We've just been extremely busy the last few months.

Just to clear things up, we have no intentions of abandoning this blog and we will try to post more often from now on. Right now we are working on a very long picture post of our Idaho and Montana summer vacation.

Here are a few teasers. Keep checking back for the real deal.

100 points for the first person who guesses what these are.

What are they doing?

No that IS NOT makeup!

Explanations to follow :)

I will be uploading all 1000+ vacation pics to a web album soon. I will post the link when I do.

-Caleb

Our second week at the farmers market

2007-05-23T20:40:00.000-07:00

We got up at 5:45 this morning and headed over to a local restaurants kitchen to bake breads, muffins, cinnamon rolls, lemon squares and butter-crunch.
As the official driver, I ended up driving back and forth from the house to the restaurant about five times in three hours. Fortunately the restaurant is only half a mile from our house. I would have ended up tripping over everything, and being tripped over in the kitchen anyway, so it worked out well.

Cody, being more of the culinary type than I am, whipped up a special brew of sun dried tomatoes, basil pesto and cream cheese, packed it into small round containers, and sold them for $4.00 each.

Kristen and Michaela baked four types of bread, three types of muffins, butter crunch, lemon squares and cinnamon rolls. They also prepared jam and lemon curd in advance.

After all the baking was finished we drove to downtown Hollister, where they hold the farmers market every Wednesday from 2:00 to 7:00 in the afternoon.

We got off to a fast start right away, but were soon stopped by the health inspector who wasn't happy with the way we were serving samples. Apparently the samples are supposed to be covered at all times. :(
This messed up our entire sales strategy, as most of our customers bought only after tasting a sample.

We ended up holding trays of our products out in the isles and shouting to everyone who would listen. Surprisingly this was more effective than the samples had been, and we almost sold out by the end of the day, as evidenced in the video. We will probably use a combination of shouting and covered sample containers from now on.

-Caleb

Isaac in the newspaper!

2007-05-20T14:19:00.000-07:00

This past Wednesday was the first day of the Hollister farmers market. We have a booth there this year selling baked goods, jams, candies and bath and body products. We had a lot of fun, and sold a lot. While Isaac was handing out samples of our baked goods, a newspaper reporter took about 100 photo's of him. Sure enough the next morning, he was in the local newspaper! Way to go Isaac!!! To see the article and photo's click Here. The photo of Isaac is at the bottom of the page.
We are planning to take more photo's of our booth and give a more in depth report next week, so keep checking back!

-Kristen

Berry Madness

2007-05-14T20:36:00.000-07:00

Several times a year our family visits a berry farm called Gizdich Ranch. Gizdich ranch is a family run U-Pick farm, located in the Watsonville valley, that grows about 6 types of berries. We usually visit each year when the strawberries, blackberries and raspberries first get ripe.

Last week the strawberries were ripe, so most of the family headed to Gizdich to pick 20 pounds of strawberries. We ate some of them and made jam out of the rest. Perhaps I will get Kristen to post about the jam making process.

Unfortunately I was working, so I wasn't able to go with them this year. But I enjoyed looking at the pictures they took and thought others might also, so I am posting some of them here.

-Caleb

The Annual Snake Round Up

2007-05-03T13:40:00.000-07:00

Every year in late April the gopher snakes in Hollister wake up from their winter hibernation and come above ground looking for food. I have always had a soft spot for snakes. When we were younger, Cody and I looked forward to this season. We would catch the snakes and keep them as "pets".

Today we caught the first snake of the year. We don't keep them as pets anymore, but we still enjoy the challenge of catching them without getting bitten. The first snake this year was a fairly small specimen and as an added bonus, it was missing it's tail. The tail was probably chopped off by a tractor towing a deep cultivator.

In our younger days we would have put it in a terrarium and tamed it.

Taming a snake is actually very easy. It just requires a lot of patience. We used to spend hours holding the snakes head until it finally got used to us. Once we tamed them they would never even think of biting us. If we handed them to someone else though, they would get very agitated and in one case, a snake actually bit a friend who it was not familiar with.

Snakes are much smarter than is commonly
believed and have highly developed qualities of recognition. Many of the snakes on our
property have unique scars that we recognize them with. All of our previously tamed snakes
are still very friendly when we catch them, and we can hold them without any risk of
getting bitten just a few minutes after we catch them each year.

The largest snake we ever caught was 5' 7" long. At that time I was only 5' 5" tall, so it was quite a challenge to tame it. It eventually became one of our friendliest snakes and we caught it regularly for many years after.

Mom was always very tolerant of our snake catching, even when they escaped in the house (a not infrequent occurrence). We actually kept a terrarium with 5 snakes in it, in the house for several months. The lid was broken and sometimes they would escape and be loose for days. We always caught them in the end though and no one ever got bitten. I have only been bitten once when I was very young and didn't know how to catch them properly.

We also have a pet ball python, but thats a story for another post.

-Caleb

The Death Of Tea?

2007-04-25T19:24:00.000-07:00

I've been an unofficial amateur connoisseur of tea for as long as I can remember. It must be because I am half British, and may also have been fueled by my strong dislike for coffee.

Eclipsed perhaps only by wine, tea has one of the oldest and richest histories of any drink. Tea figures prominently in ancient Chinese medicine and folklore and is believed to have originated in China around 1000 BC. The taxation of tea was a major factor in --and is claimed by some to have actually been responsible for-- the Revolutionary War. Who hasn't heard of the Boston Tea Party?

Unfortunately teas popularity has steadily declined over the last 300 years until it has actually become a fairly rare drink in many countries. It wasn't always like that and still isn't in a few countries, especially England, China and Japan.
England's whole society used to revolve around afternoon tea, and still does to some extent.

The United States on the other hand has completely dropped tea from the list of common drinks. Very few restaurants offer it and almost none advertise it. Tea is almost unheard of in most American homes. The corporate scene hasn't been quite so quick to drop it; Tea can still be found in many offices beside the coffee dispenser.

Tea recently experienced a slight revival in the health minded community because of it's antioxidant qualities, but it is destined to be short lived as it has already lost most of it's momentum, and is slipping back into oblivion.

Perhaps the reason for the decline in tea drinking is that it is time consuming to make, especially if you make it properly. People don't have time to boil water, pour it over the tea bag, and wait three minutes for it to steep anymore. These are the days of Starbucks and instant coffee (although incidentally Starbucks does sell tea). Tea also contains less caffeine than coffee, a very important factor for modern Starbucks addicts.

I have no idea why I decided to write about tea tonight. Perhaps the excellent cup of Jasmine White Tea I just enjoyed inspired me. :)

If you want to learn more, Wikipedia has a fairly comprehensive --and somewhat fragmented-- overview Here.

-Caleb

UC Davis Picnic Day

2007-04-14T20:37:00.000-07:00

Every year on the second Saturday in April UC Davis holds a Picnic Day. Picnic Day is a sort of open house with arts, crafts, science, technology, and agricultural exhibits.
This was the first year we attended and of course it rained all day. :-(
That didn't stop us from having a great time though, especially since most of the exhibits were indoors.

Our first stop was the Agriculture exhibit. They had a really neat exhibit showing the life cycle of sturgeon, and even had some young sturgeon in a tank. I'm still not exactly sure what sturgeon have to do with Agriculture, but they were in the Agriculture building.
There was also an exhibit that taught how to isolate DNA from split peas using simple household ingredients like soap, meat tenderizer and rubbing alcohol.
Are you getting the feeling that these were no ordinary farmers?
Of course they also had cow and goat milking and a petting zoo, but for some reason that just wasn't as much of a hit in our family. :-)

Next we visited the avian building, where they had baby chicks and quail hatching in incubators.
In the same building, they were giving out free popcorn and cotton candy, which was a huge hit with the kids.
They also were giving out packages of 300 live lady bugs. We are now the proud owners of 1000+ of these little critters, which are currently crawling around our garden.

Toyota was an official sponsor of the event, so of course they were giving rides in their new
fuel cell powered SUV prototypes.
I was surprised how practical these cars turned out to be. They had plenty of power and actually looked the same on the
outside as the regular 2007 SUV's.
Now if I could only scrape together 1.5 million to buy one. I have a feeling I will be driving the gas powered, carbon emitting type until the price comes down a bit.

The arts and crafts building had a very neat exhibit that taught the
little ones how to build a pyramid out of gumdrops and tooth picks.
They also had pottery, glass blowing, woodworking, knitting, spinning and painting demonstrations.
My favorite though, was the sushi dish painting activity.
Every one  in the family got to paint their own sushi dish.
We ended up with some really creative looking sushi dishes.

Below are a few photos. Some of them are blurry, and we didn't get very many because of the rain. If you want to see the entire album Click Here.

Everything was free and it seemed to be a very community
centered event with a minimum of commercial advertising.
We will definitely be back next year.

-Caleb and Kristen

Beach Photos

2007-04-10T21:24:00.000-07:00

This is upload attempt number twenty. I have been having a LOT of trouble uploading pictures to the blog. Picasa Web Albums tries to manage the uploads, but when I use it the pictures just appear as blank boxes.

I am trying the direct upload feature from Picasa. If you don't see photos below it means that this didn't work either.

Thanks for your patience while I have been sorting this out.

-Caleb

Update: This was supposed to have 9 pictures, not 4. I give up. If anyone wants to see all the beach photos that we took on that trip (Warning: if you have a slow internet connection this might be a bad idea, because there's over 90 pics) Click Here

Cinnamon Roll Recipe (as good as Cinnabon!)

2007-04-02T17:50:00.000-07:00

Michaela and I are planning on selling baked goods, jams and handmade soaps at our local farmers market this Summer. We were in search of a REALLY yummy cinnamon roll recipe. You know, the melt in your mouth, super sweet and gooey, keep people coming back for more kind? Well, we've found it! This is supposed to be the original Cinnabon recipe. I'm not sure if that's true, but these are very close!

Rolls:
1¼ oz. pkg. Yeast
1 c. warm milk
½ c. granulated sugar
1/3 c. melted butter
1 t. salt
2 eggs
4 c. all-purpose flour

Filling:
1 c. packed brown sugar
2 1/2 TBS. cinnamon
1/2 c. butter

Icing:
1/2 C. butter, softened
1½ c. confectioners sugar
¼ c. (2 oz.) cream cheese
½ t. real vanilla extract
1/8 t. salt

Rolls: Oven to 400° F.
(1) Dissolve yeast in milk.
(2) Mix in sugar, butter, salt, eggs, flour. Mix well.
(3) Turn dough out onto lightly floured surface. Knead into a large ball. Cover; let rise 1 hour.
(4) Roll dough into a 21" x 16" wide rectangle. Spread the softened butter all over, then sprinkle with the sugar and cinnamon
(5) Roll from long-side to short-side. Pinch the ends.
(6) Using very sharp knife cut into 10 rolls. (These are really big. you can cut them smaller if you want)
(6) Grease your preferred baking pan (I like mine to be all squished up next to the other)- I generally use an 11"x 15" pan. Place rolls in pan and let rise for 30 minutes.
(8) Bake until the rolls are slightly browned and not doughy, about 10-12 min. This will vary according to your oven. Just don't over bake.
(9) When done, spread them with the icing.
(10) Enjoy!

Icing instructions:
Cream all ingredients together with an electric mixer. Beat for at least 2 min. on med-high speed to get that nice, whipped icing like Cinnabon serves.

These are best enjoyed warm, but they are also good the next day. We pop them in the microwave for 10-15 sec. each.

Beach photo's!

2007-03-31T17:24:00.001-07:00

Click Here to go to the pictures. I finally gave up on uploading them and just posted a link to Picasa Web Albums with all the pictures of that trip.

Living on the coast of California, We have collected a large number of beach photo's over the years. Here are a few that I was able to find browsing through our THOUSANDS (maybe millions:-) of photo's on our computers.
Enjoy!
-Kristen

Note From Tech Support:
Sorry for the inconvenience but Picasa Web Albums is experiencing technical difficulties. Pictures are currently unavailable.

Ok, so thats not really from Picasa Tech support. For some reason Picasa Web Albums (Which manages the pictures for blogger) deleted the pictures from our albums. We will upload them again as soon as possible.
Sorry Ya'll.

The Blog has been quiet lately

2007-03-31T11:34:00.000-07:00

Because of a very busy schedule I haven't had a lot of time for reading lately, so I don't have any books to review, and we haven't really
done anything worthy of blogging
in a few weeks. Of course some would say that anything is worthy of blogging and that anything is interesting when it is well written, but I'm not there yet. So instead I find myself blogging about the lack of things to blog about.
A circular endeavour? Certainly.

Just want to make sure everyone knows that we have no intention of abandoning this blog.
The frequency of posts will follow the ebb and flow of family life. Regulated by how much time we have and what we are doing. Right now we are very busy so the posts will be slow in coming.
My sisters are working on a few posts, so stay tuned for some action soon.
I even heard rumor that they might post some more recipes!
For all you guys out there, try
not to get too excited. :-)

Have a good weekend,

-Caleb

More Writing Books

2007-03-17T12:49:00.000-07:00

As part of a continuing effort to improve my writing I recently borrowed several writing books from our local library.
I was surprised how badly written some of them were. You would think that someone trying to write a book on writing would at least learn to write well first. I slogged through them anyway and if nothing else I learned what not to do, especially when writing "how to" books. It is also possible that I have my expectations too high after reading "On Writing Well" by William Zinsser (My previous review here).

The first and best book was "Working With Words In Business And Legal Writing" by Lynne Agress.
Lynne has a knack for using humor to explain complex subjects, without sounding superficial. Like William Zinsser, Lynne believes that good writing is difficult to create and that writing improves in direct proportion to the number of things you take out of it. Of course this view could be taken to an extreme, but Lynne uses specific rules outlined in the book to strike a balance between stripping writing down to the essentials and retaining some personality.
At a compact 123 pages this was a great saturday afternoon read.

"How to Write Book Reports" by Harry Teitelbaum was a disappointment. Typical of "how to" books it contained seemingly endless rows of rules and checklists (none of which I even remember), as well as being rather repetitious. The 91 pages it contains would be more effective if they were condensed to 50. Perhaps this excerpt from the back of the book says it best: "Complete with step-by-step instructions for all phases of the process--from reading the book to writing the final draft--it gives you a success formula you'll use again and again [Italics Mine].
If I learned anything from this book it would be to never use lists of rules as a substitute for good writing.

Another disappointment was "Writing Good Reports" by John Bowden. 77 pages of almost nonstop bulleted lists, combined with repetition and poor grammar make this book almost unreadable. Need I say more?

-Caleb

Cake Decorating

2007-03-13T21:22:00.000-07:00

Over the past month, Michaela and I took a series of cake decorating classes. We learned so much! We each made a frosted cake each week, and took it to the class. There we learned the basics (such as stars and shells) to more advanced techniques such as drop flowers, roses, etc...
We hope to continue with the classes, and learn to decorate with fondant and eventually to make tiered wedding cakes!
Here are a couple of photo's of our latest creations!

Trip to the San Francisco Zoo

2007-03-07T19:58:00.000-08:00

We love field trips! Not only are they usually a better way to learn about something then reading about it in a text book, they create great family memories, not to mention great photo opportunities!

Our field trip of the month was a trip to the San Francisco Zoo. Dad, Caleb and Cody had to work, so they missed out. :-(

Mom, Michaela, Isaac and I loaded up the numerous car seats, strollers, bottles, diapers, sandwiches etc.... into our 15 passenger van, and made the two hour car drive to San Francisco. (Oh, we also loaded up the 5 little ones :-). After taking several wrong turns( Mom was on the cell phone), we finally made it.

The first thing we did was have lunch, as all of the little ones were convinced that they were "starving". When the sea gulls and peacocks showed up, they suddenly decided that they were not so hungry, and that they had plenty to share with the birds.

Kai enjoying a sandwich

The peacock that decided to share our lunch

Next we visited the bears (Isaac took about 50 pictures of this guy!)

Here's a photo of my favorite Zoo creature......the Anteater!

The new Giraffe exhibit was really neat

This guy won the "laziest animal" award

And the best photo's...................the kids!!!!!

On Writing Well

2007-02-16T16:08:00.000-08:00

One of my recent Amazon.com acquisitions was "On Writing Well" By William Zinsser.

Before I read the book I had no idea of the literary skills of Zinsser. I thought I would be confronted with a daunting list of dos and don'ts typical of "how to" books. Instead I found(in my opinion) a literary masterpiece.
Zinsser seamlessly weaves instruction and encouragement together in a clear crisp style that's so hard to find in modern literature. He pulls no punches in stating how difficult good writing is to create, while making you feel like you can master it. The whole book is reminiscent of a pep talk for writers, mixed with practical advice and supported by numerous examples.

The principles outlined in this book are foundational to good writing. But the book does not cover grammar and punctuation. Zinsser assumes that you are already familiar with basic literary usage.

Zinssers instruction helped me realize what makes good writing good. It also motivated me to write more. I can't say much for the practical application however, since I probably wouldn't be a very objective judge of my own writing. But I do know several excellent writers that recommend Zinssers work. This book is almost essential reading for anyone wanting to write clearly and well.

-Caleb

Happy Valentines Day!

2007-02-16T13:45:00.000-08:00

Here are some photos of our Valentines day festivities!

True to tradition, Dad bought all of the kids a bag of candy and
balloons!

Annaliese, showing off a cookie that she made for Caleb

Michael ate more frosting then he put on his cookie!

Valentines Day Heart Cookie Recipe
INGREDIENTS Makes about 15 cookies
1 cup butter
1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract (optional)
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cream of tartar

DIRECTIONS
In a large bowl, cream together butter and confectioners' sugar. Beat in egg, vanilla and almond extract. Mix well.
In a medium bowl, stir together flour, baking soda and cream of tartar; blend into the butter mixture. Divide dough into thirds and shape into balls.
Working with 1/3 of dough at a time, roll out dough into desired thickness on a lightly floured surface. For each heart sandwich cookie, cut out 2 3-inch hearts. Cut out the center of ONE of the 3-inch hearts with the 1 1/2-inch cutter.
Place each piece separately on an ungreased cookie sheet, 1 - 2 inches apart. Bake in a preheated, 350 degrees F oven until lightly browned (7-8 minutes for 1/4 inch thick cookies). Cool completely on wire rack. Frost bottom cookie with Pink Valentine Frosting and place an open centered cookie on top to form the sandwich. Also frost the small 1 1/2 inch hearts and serve as separate cookies.

Frost with Pink Valentine Frosting ....

1 cup sifted confectioners' sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon water
2 drops red food coloring
DIRECTIONS
Blend sugar, salt and flavoring. Add just enough water to make it easy to spread. Add 2 drops red food coloring and mix well
Spread on cookies and sprinkle with red sprinkles
Enjoy!

Kai!

2007-02-15T19:15:00.000-08:00

Here are a few photo's of our adorable baby boy! Kai in his stroller

Bath time!

Cody giving Kai a tractor ride

A day at the World AG Expo

2007-02-15T18:58:00.000-08:00

Our family recently attended the World AG Expo in Tulare, California. The World AG Expo is the worlds largest Agricultural "trade show". Dad used to run a booth at this show every year when he was in the agricultural business. Since then, we have attended almost every year as a family. We consider it one of our many
"Homeschool field trips" of the year. Many of Dad's old customers and co-workers still attend the show, so we always run into lots of friends!

This year the weather was warm and sunny (usually it's raining), so sunny that I got a slight sun burn and was REALLY wishing that I had brought my sunglasses :-)

The little boys had tons of fun "driving" the tractors that were on display. The little ones (and some of the not so little ones :-)) collected bags of candy and literature from the many booths. The antique tractor/equipment display was really neat. Dad and the boys were able to get lots of info. on products for business.

Here's a few photo's of the kids on the Tractors. (the highlight of the show for them:-)

Michael "driving"!

Isaac and Annaliese on one of the big tractors.