Honeymoon before the Wedding – Texas Hill Country April 15-23, 2010

September 4, 2011 at 4:43 pm (Uncategorized)

(This was created for an exercise in writing class. It was fun to write and reminds me of our wonderful vacation together. I wanted to put it somewhere it wouldn’t get lost.)

Honeymoon Before the Wedding

San Antonio welcomes us with pelting rain,

Showers us with luxury. Smooth sheets, fat, fluffy robes

and Jose Cuervo. Fiesta!

Unmarried honeymooners climb Enchanted Rock,

Cross chasms uncertainly.

Rest on rustic wooden benches.

They’ve still got a lotta life left in ‘em.

Michael snaps a picture of me in his new cowboy hat. Beautiful in his eyes.

Adventurers rekindle smoldering embers with hot breath and careful tending.

Celebrate with sweet red wine.

A thrift store wedding band for $7. The luckiest couple in Texas.

Mike Brindley in Texas Hill Country April 2010

Michael

Sherrie Pryor Brindley in Texas Hill Country 2010

Sherrie

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5 Things I Am Loving Now

June 20, 2011 at 1:55 pm (Uncategorized)

1. Old-timey, bluegrass & blues music by the Skinny Raccoons -

From the first time I saw the name on a poster in Blue Fish Music store in Plymouth’s Old Village 3 years ago right up until Mike hired them to play for my non-birthday party this past April,  something about the heartfelt lyrics and the personal sound of the music has me hooked. I just can’t get enough.  This is one of my favorites but if you want the really good stuff check out their original work on ReverbNation. You can even download their songs for free. (And like them on Facebook for notice of upcoming shows)

2. Seeds Studio Photography by Scottie Magro-

The artful, insightful photos Scottie Magro took of Alanah, Adam and Daniel at our house this past spring are so beautiful I almost cry with happiness every time I look at them. She captured each of their little personalities so clearly.

Alanah "Nana"

Adam "Ama"

Daniel "boonedoggle"

3. Downtown Wayne Revitalization

I can’t remember a time when I’ve been more excited and proud to live in Wayne! The Wayne Ripple Effect group along with many dedicated residents and business owners has been gaining momentum ever since the Michigan Main Street presentation last October. The “For the Love of Wayne” blog (inspired by the For the Love of Cities book), flower planting project, downtown clean up and their “Hops & Schnapps” event have brought some added zest to the downtown. And there’s more to come!  You know the community pride is contagious when Mike Brindley gets inspired! (Wayne folks can “like” the Facebook page for updates.)

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4. Harry Potter -

With the final installation of the movies coming out, Mike and I have watched/re-watched the first 6.5 movies. Now I’m listening to the books on CD in the car. I’m not sure if it’s just that the stories are that good (and they are) or if it’s just that every word takes me straight back in time to 2000 when  Kevin & Rissy and I started reading them together every night before bed during “storytime”.

5. Pringles Light Sour Cream and Onion Chips -

What other potato chip can you eat for just about 4 calories each. Yum.

Pringles. Yum!

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Testing our Faith in Humanity with Flowers

May 24, 2011 at 12:21 am (Uncategorized)
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My husband is a very generous man. He would give a stranger the shirt off his back, the shoes off both feet and probably his BVD’s if called upon, but he draws the line at saving the world. That’s my department.

Mike Brindley

That's Mike.

For the past few years I have been working with other folks in the community to revitalize Downtown Wayne. I go to meetings, help with fundraisers and spread the word in every way I know how. Some of the other people who do this with me have spouses that design logos, clean flower planters and otherwise support their cause.

That’s not Mike.

So imagine my surprise when we were sitting on the porch this morning drinking our first cup of coffee listening to a rather insistent cardinal in the tree next door and he said, “Hey Red, I was thinking about putting a pot of flowers on each of the four corners here. Do you think the neighbors will mind, the corners are sort of theirs, too?” And he walked me out across the yard to the corner just to be sure I understood his vision of placing flowerpots near the curbs at the crosswalks.

Tonight we picked up four brand-new pots and a flat of marigolds and a flat of petunias. We planted them in the good Miracle Grow soil and placed them at the four corners of the intersection at Forest Ave & 4th Street.

He was inspired, he said, by the Wayne Ripple Effect flower planting project in the downtown. He will say it’s just that he likes flowers around, but I think it’s something more. It reminded me of a bumper sticker I saw today that said, “Be the Change you want to see in the World”.

Faith in Humanity Flowers

Faith in Humanity Flowers

So today is the first day the pots are out there unprotected in the public space that has no psychological barrier, no cyclone fence, not even a hedgerow to remind a passerby that this flower pot belongs to someone else.

Tomorrow morning I am hoping we can count “Day One” that the pots have survived out there on the four corners undisturbed and that maybe in October when it’s time to clean them out and put them away for the season all four will still be there. A shining testament of hopefulness reaffirming our faith in humanity.

Corner #4

Corner #4

Corner #3

Corner #3

Corner #2

Corner #2

Corner #1

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Life Outside My Window – Three Bags Full

July 13, 2010 at 1:19 pm (Uncategorized)

It would be easy to become the “lady who helps stray people” living on this corner.

Our House

This morning as I am clearing up my breakfast dishes and pouring my second cup of coffee, I hear a sound almost like a windchime of light metal gently joggling around. When I look out the window I see a  white-haired woman carrying three large garbage bags of returnables heading away from the liquor store toward another party store a few blocks away on Wayne Road.

She stops and I step back away from the window, so she doesn’t see me watching her. I don’t know if it is her embarrassment that concerns me or mine.

She yells back in the direction she came from “Go back! Go with your mother!”

Whoever it is must keep coming because the old lady shouts a couple more times for the person to “go back”.

A smaller voice finally shouts in response, “Grandma, she told me to go with you.”

“Mighty generous of her,” she says out loud.

A young girl, maybe 10 years old, runs up to the old woman and relieves the grandmother by taking one of the garbage bags. They continue walking, but the young girl tells the grandmother to wait. She turns around and yells, encouraging her mother.

“Catch up, mama.”

“Shhh,” the grandmother, who has done the most yelling of all,  hisses at the young girl.

Undaunted the girl continues to yell to her mother.

“C’mon, mama. You can help carry one of the bags.”

“She’s too proud,” the grandmother snarls at the girl.

The mama finally catches up to her daughter and mother. I see that it is a girl that I went to school with. I wonder what accumulation of circumstances has culminated in her being her here walking down the sidewalk outside my house at 9am on a Tuesday with her mom and daughter and three bags of returnables.

I try to think of a way to help. I could give them our empties, but they can barely carry what they have. Maybe offer them a ride to the store, but I have car seats in the back of my 2-door Monte Carlo and a stroller in the trunk. Every thing I think of only seems like it would be further embarrassment to them.

I stand and feel the weight on my heart as I watch them go; three generations of women depending on whatever prosperity three garbage bags of returnables might offer them.

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Perfect day for (Golden) Delicious Apple Crisp!

October 10, 2009 at 11:50 am (Recipes)
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Apples are always readily available in the grocery store, so you can bake apple crisp any day of the year. But there is

Golden Delicious Apple Crisp

Golden Delicious Apple Crisp

something oh! so delightful about warm-from-the-oven apple crisp on a fall day with the leaves turning and and a little chill in the air.

Please feel free to claim this apple crisp recipe as your own. I call it…My Awesome Apple Crisp…but you can call it whatever you like.

5 Cups of Golden Delicious Apples, peeled and sliced (Granny Smith are also good)

1-1/2 cups of granulated sugar

1-1/2 teaspoons of cinnamon

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup quick cooking oatmeal

1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)

1/4 cup unsalted butter, cold, cut into chunks

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 375*F.

In a large bowl, mix together the chopped apples, 1/2 cup of the sugar, and the cinnamon.

In a food processor, process the flour, oats, remaining sugar, cold butter and vanilla, pulsing just to blend. You want it lumpy and bumpy, not smooth. (Actually, if you really want to go all out…double the recipe for the topping…It’s so good. And then you can pick some off of the top and still have plenty for your family.) Mix in nuts, if desired.

Mix 1/2 cup of topping with the apples and toss well.

Transfer to  9″ x 9″ glass baking dish or your favorite casserole of similar size. Spread remaining topping over apple mixture.

Bake for 35 minutes till browned nicely.

Serve warm with a scoop of Edy’s Vanilla Bean ice cream while sitting on your front porch admiring the trees dressed up in their best colors and that particularly peaceful fall scent in the air. Oh, heaven!

**Acknowledgments to my friend Sharman, for sharing her bountiful Golden Delicious harvest with me. Those apples earned their name and made this recipe proud!

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Life Outside My Window–Ryder takes the wheel

September 8, 2009 at 12:09 pm (Uncategorized)
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Our House

Our House

It’s Sunday morning. Mike and I have just returned from the Romulus House Restaurant, where they make the most delicious scrambled eggs with feta, and fresh, homemade fried potatoes. Yum.

We are relaxing on the couch, trying to muster up the energy to dress up and head out to the Renaissance Festival. I am reading, Mike is looking out the window. He motions for me to look, as Ryder, age 5-ish (from C’mon Ryder, the Beer’s getting warm, fame) and his slightly older sister age 7-ish come four-wheeling over the neighbor’s lawn with their little electric powered jeep.

They are nearly around the block from their house, and no grown up is anywhere to be seen.

We had noticed them in the street riding the jeep in front of their own house, maybe 15 minutes earlier as we returned home from breakfast. Usually I am the one worrying about the neighbor kids and being nosey, I mean, concerned about what’s happening on our street.

Today, Mike hops up from the couch and goes to the window, I wonder whether he is going to tell the kids to go home, since they are unsupervised, and we know they have a habit of riding right out into the street, but I just keep on peacefully reading, absorbed in my story of Ordinary Love and Good Will by Jane Smiley.

Suddenly Mike, bursts out with, “Did you see that! Sherrie! Did you see that?”

I didn’t see. I was reading, of course.

The sister apparently in an attempt to convince Ryder, the driver of the Jeep, to turn around and head home, decided to use brute force to get her message across. She grabbed him by the hair, jerked his head back and slapped him upside the head three times in quick succession.

By now, Mike has my attention. I stand up and look out just in time to see the sister, climb over Ryder and push him into the passenger seat, take the wheel and whip that jeep around in a 180* move heading them towards home, going all-terrain over the neighbor’s lawn again.

This excitement, was just what we needed to  get us moving off the couch and out of the house. We quickly dressed in our costumes and headed off to the Renaissance Festival for a less violent afternoon of entertainment.

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Internet Recipe Matchmaking or Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Raisin Cookies or Love at First Bite

September 4, 2009 at 9:16 am (Recipes, Uncategorized)
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Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

In the olden days, I hated recipes. They always called for something I didn’t have in the house.  So, I did a lot of improvising. Sometimes with yummy results, sometimes with thank-goodness-my-family-isn’t-picky results. All that has changed with invention of this newfangled internet thing.

Now, my favorite way to cook, is to see what I HAVE and then search a recipe for it. Here is one of my lucky finds from last weekend! I realized that four jars of various kinds of peanut butter in the refrigerator was probably at least one jar too many (sunflower butter, almond butter, organic valencia peanut butter, and some weird diet peanut butter I bought in a weak,  delusional moment, peanutbutter should never be—DIET! No!)

I also have some raisins that probably should be used up and a half bag of chocolate chips, which is obviously half a bag short of my normal G.G.’s Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. I started to wonder…maybe there is a recipe for Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Raisin cookies out there somewhere in the world? I fire up the Mozilla Firefox and Guess what? There is! And it’s super yummy!

Here is my slightly Sherrie’d version…as I eat a frozen dough ball at my computer…mmm! Warning…the dough tastes dangerously, deliciously close to Nutella!

SHERRIE’S PEANUT BUTTER CHOCOLATE CHIP OATMEAL RAISIN COOKIES

1 cup butter

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1 cup brown sugar

3/4 cup peanut butter

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/3 c unsweetened cocoa powder

2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup chocolate chips

1 cup raisins

1-1/2 cups quick cooking rolled oats

1. With an electric mixer,  beat butter, sugars and peanut butter together and then beat in eggs and vanilla until smooth. Scrape down sides of bowl as needed.

2. In another bowl, mix flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt. Beat into butter mixture until well incorporated. Stir in chocolate chips, oats and raisins.

3. Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls, 3 inches apart onto baking stone. Flatten slightly with a fork until cookies are about 1/2 inch thick.

4. Bake in 350*F oven until cookies  tops feel set when lightly pressed, 12 to 14 minutes they will feel underdone but will firm up as they cool.

5. Let stand 5 minutes on sheets, then with a wide spatula, transfer cookies to racks to cool.

Yield: 4 dozen

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Ama Crawls! Amazing 3 Minute Video!

September 1, 2009 at 11:45 am (Family)

In this video you will see the first 20  seconds where Ama is being bashful. He is only 7 months old, so he doesn’t want to be boastful, showing off his amazing crawling skills. And then…he takes off, after his sister’s cup, while she is distracted putting her Yo Gabba Gabba DVD into the player. Enjoy!

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Equal Time for Ama (aka Adam)

August 24, 2009 at 2:16 pm (Family)
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This is a 30 second video of Ama (aka Adam). His big sister nicknamed him Ama, and we have all adopted it as his nickname. Normally he smiles giant open mouthed smiles, and grins and coos when you talk to him, but like his sister, when I get the camera out, he’s like the Looney Tunes Frog in the Box (you remember that one). He just acts like he has nothing to say. :) Enjoy his sweet little face.

Me and Ama 8-21-09

Me and Ama 8-21-09

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Sweet Customer Service

August 21, 2009 at 8:47 pm (Uncategorized)
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One of Sweet 220's sweet cakes!

One of Sweet 220's sweet cakes!

This is what good customer service looks like:

While you are enjoying what it looks like, let me  tell you what it tastes like: Three espresso soaked layers of moist, barely sweet, melt-in-your-mouth cake alternating with a rich creamy filling, topped with a single dark chocolate dipped, sugar-encrusted lady finger and the tiniest sprinkling of coconut shavings. Rich, decadent, luxurious.

I wandered into Sweet 220, a pastry and specialty cake shop in Downtown Northville, as a pure spectator. I’m doing research for a writing job. (I know, I’m lucky. It’s a great job.) Dahlia, one of the owners, greeted me, and even though I was just looking, she engaged me in pleasant conversation and made me feel like a welcome guest.

Dalia and her husband Hass, opened Sweet 220, on Main Street in the Northville Square  just two weeks ago, but it felt like old home week when I walked in the door this afternoon. She was friendly telling me about her and her husband’s passion for doing beautiful cakes in honor of their customer’s celebrations.

“We have been to bakeries ourselves in the past to order cakes, and the person behind the counter barely spoke to us,” she said.

Hass was a pastry chef at a 5-diamond resort in Scotsdale, Arizona before he and Dahlia decided to return to Michigan to be closer to family. “It wasn’t a good time to try and find a job here,” she said, “So we decided to open our own shop.”

They seem like the type of people you would trust with something as important as your wedding cake. You can tell it’s personal to them.

She and Hass, spent several minutes talking to me and showing off photos of their beautiful (and no doubt tasty) wedding and birthday cakes. Like any good hostess, she wouldn’t let me leave without at least tasting something. She scanned the cases, looking at me and back at the cases, like a shop girl selecting the perfect accessory to match your sweater.

She reached in and then handed me the Tiramisu. Mmmmmm. It was the best I have eaten and I am happy to say I will be going back there again soon to try more of their tempting offerings.

Sweet 220 is located at 133 W. Main Street, Suite 220, Northville MI 48167

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