Dear December,

How did you get here so quickly? I wasn’t expecting you for another few months. Or at least weeks. Your too prompt arrival means that the countdown ticking is getting louder and louder and I don’t think I’m quite ready for it.

I always have mixed emotions when it comes to you, December. You bring around some of my favourite weather and holidays, but I have to get through the avalanche first. Like the blizzard that supposed to come tomorrow, I’m buried in schoolwork and studying instead of snow. How I would love to have time to frolic in your December-ness!  Instead my advent is spent simultaneously counting the days until my last exam and until Jesus’ birth. Alas!

December, I look forward to enjoying you after the 21st – but by then you’re already almost over! You better save the best for last or I’ll be sorely disappointed.

If I had a spare moment, I would pine for you like some love-sick heroine by the window. Maybe instead, I will look through the Christmas light-lined window at the snow and then back to my studying.  I look forward to spending time with you more completely in 2 1/2 weeks and please, have a glass (pitcher?) of eggnog ready for me.

Bean

How do you feel about December being here already?

I wanted to make cupcakes yesterday for November’s Go Ahead Honey it’s Gluten Free challenge, however I learned that I had already missed the deadline. (Sad day!) I was still keen to bake something, so I thought that I would try something new from one of my newer cookbooks: Gluten Free Gourmet Desserts and Baked Goods. (Or you can see a Google Book Copy.) Everything seriously looks so delicious in this book – I bought it because of the pictures, not the recipes. It also taught me that gourmet == french cuisine. I must live under a rock as I didn’t know that before.

One delightful looking picture caught my interest: something called Pear Clafoutis. I had no idea what clafoutis was – the author gives it the translation of fruit cobbler. Wikipedia gives a better answer:

Clafoutis is a baked French dessert that is typically made by baking fresh fruit (traditionally cherries) and a batter, halfway between a Yorkshire pudding/pancake batter and a custard ^[1], in a baking dish. - Wikipedia

And what can I say? Regardless of how one describes it, it was delicious. And very simple!

Gluten Free Pear Clafoutis

2/3 c. each of almond flour, brown sugar and rice flour
3 eggs
1 c. rice milk (I used Ryza)
3 pears, peeled and sliced
Sprinkle of cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 400C.
2. Oil a glass or earthenware cake or loaf pan. (I used a glass loaf pan)
3. Combine almonds, sugar and rice flour in a bowl.
4. Add eggs.
5. Mix in rice milk, a little at a time.
6. Fold fruit into batter.
7. Pour into prepared pan and sprinkle cinnamon on top.
8. Bake for 30-45 minutes until set.

I’m not sure if you’re supposed to eat it warm or cold, but both tasted good!

I know that my posts have been lacking in serious content for the last while, but my excuse is that I’m using all my brainpower for school. So, instead, I’ll leave you with something entertaining that one of my friend’s posted on facebook:

Gotta love the Muppets, hey? Did anyone else watch their Christmas special with Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock as a kid or not so kid?

… I find this to be cute, hilarious and all around awesome:

This gem is courtesy of UOP

Oh, propylene, how I love thee. (Sometimes.)

Today’s saturday snapshot theme from Amanda over at Teasingly Diverse is: Love.

My friend and her newborn baby.

Enough Said.

This past weekend was reading break (where we had more than 4 days off!), so Heather and I headed out to Vancouver Island. I know, you must be thinking that I’m crazy because it appears that I don’t travel anywhere else. I guess I don’t, but I love Vancouver Island and our three days away didn’t disappoint!

We got to witness so many fantastic waves that had I watched every good wave show we saw, I would have done nothing else.

We visited an old growth forest and there were pumpkins… all along the side of the road. It was quite random but very happy.

We went for tea at The Empress Hotel in Victoria. If you have a chance and have money, I highly recommend it because look at all the (gluten free!) goodies that you get:

They have the most delicious lemon curd. Ever. Even if you dislike lemons, you’ll like it. It’s that good.

And for you gluten-a-tors, this is the spread you get:

Just a word of warning – when you’re on vacation, don’t comment that you’ve had surprisingly good weather for two days in a row because it will rain for the rest of the time and you’ll find out that your rental car has a tendency to hydroplane while it’s pouring in the dark. Not that it happened to us.

What did you do this weekend?

So, I tried to make pumpkin cake pops for a Halloween Party last weekend.

They’re not quite as pretty as anything Bakerella would do, but considering it was my first time, I think they turned out fairly well. And my friend’s loved them, so who am I to complain?

Cake Pops ala Bean

What you’ll need:

1 white cake mix (I used celimix’s white cake and added 1/2 c. pumpkin, 1/4 c. less water and 1/4 – 1/2 tsp. each of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves)
1 can of icing (I used Betty Crocker’s whipped vanilla icing.)
Lollipop sticks
1-2 packages of vanilla candy melts (or chocolate)
Food colouring
Green Jelly Bellies

1. Bake cake according to directions with pumpkin, etc. Let it cool completely.
   
2. Once the cake is cooled, use a fork our your fingers to crumble the entire cake.
3. Add most of a container of icing. (Be careful as I added too much! I think you want it so that they will stick together well.
   
4. Taking bits of cake, roll into balls and place on a wax paper lined cookie sheet. (I recommend making them about 1″ in diameter.)
5. Put pops in the fridge and leave them there until quite cool. (The dipping process seemed easier when the pops were cooler.)
   
6. Meanwhile, melt the candy melts in a double boiler. Add food colouring as desired.
7. Poke lollipop sticks into the pops, making sure that you don’t go all the way through.
8. Dip pops into candy melts, using a spoon to help cover evenly. (Don’t let the melts get too hot as they lose their consistency and it is not pleasant.)
9. Place a jelly belly into the top for a stem and poke sticks into styrofoam to let pops cool.
10. Once cool, enjoy!

Some didn’t want to stay on their sticks, but that’s okay as they’re still quite tasty!

Have you ever tried to make cake pops before?

I feel like I want to cry because I don’t know what to do.

We’re having issues with one member of my design group. He hasn’t been pulling his weight, has missed many meetings and seems to want to ride out on our good work while doing as little as possible. The proverbial “icing on the cake” was this past week – I better add some fondant as well because that’s how good it is. So what happened?

We were supposed to have a really important strategy meeting last Thursday to decide how we’re going to proceed after our midterm report and presentation that he didn’t show up to. We had one of our midterms the night before, so we thought “maybe couldn’t deal with it or something” despite how our meeting was at 3pm. He didn’t show up to our regular team meeting on Friday or to our lab. I had phoned, texted and emailed him to no reply. So here we were thinking he had H1N1 or was dying as he’s always attached to his phone.

Last night I texted him to ask him if was alright and if he was planning to be at school today so that we could finally decide how to move ahead in our project. He answered that he had a very hectic weekend and that he was stuck in Edmonton on Thursday and Friday. We later found out that the car he had with him in Edmonton blew its radiator, which is really unfortunate, but that was on Thursday evening. In addition, he said that his phone died right after he received the phone message I sent him on Friday. This really bothers me because his car died in Edmonton after we were supposed to have our meeting and his phoned died the day after the important meeting. The snarky part of me wants to ask “what on earth were you doing in Edmonton, a three hour drive away, the day after an evening midterm when you had a meeting at three!?”

Reading between the lines, I do understand that he was probably having some personal angst, which is perfectly excusable. Heck, one of our group members has a kid and I have frequent bouts of emotional upheaval, so we understand that life can get in the way and the need to take a break from school. However, generally when something comes up it is expected that you give someone warning that you won’t be there. If you didn’t show up to work for two days without telling anyone, chances are you might not have a job when you finally get back. Right now, our job is school and one of our main tasks is to work on this design project.

So, when we had our meeting this morning, we confronted him about the whole situation and how we expect better behaviour in the future – to at least tell us when you’re not going to show up. I really hate confronting people as I would love to give them chance after chance to let them show their personal integrity but this situation warranted it. He did apologize for his behaviour and we got on with our meeting.

Late this afternoon, two of us went to talk to our supervisor about what power we have to deal with the situation if it gets worse. He said that once all three of us feel that we have exhausted peace talks amongst us, it would be time to start a paper trail by writing a letter to him outlining our concerns. He explained that depending on the severity of concerns, he and the course coordinator would discuss what to do with the worst penalty being kicked out of the course.

We started writing our letter highlighting our main concerns: missing meetings, not giving us warning for missing meetings and not putting in enough effort. I’m quite proud of this letter as it is very objective, professional and states the facts without making any accusations. We would really like to be able to work out our issues with him, however he hasn’t really stepped up to the plate yet. You’d think that by fourth year of engineering one would be used to working really hard and giving your best but I guess not in this case. Maybe he has been having issues, but we would be so much more understanding if he told us and asked for help!

Now it’s time we get to the fondant on our”cake of joy:” plagiarism. I know, that is a very scary word that is very, very accusational and has many bad connotations including being expelled from university. We unfortunately have too many good reasons to use this word.

It first started with our lab proposal for a different course – he had just put the lab procedure from bullets into sentences without changing much. We gave him the benefit of the doubt, edited it out and let it slide. Then for our design midterm progress report, a lot of what he had written sounded very much like a promotional piece companies publish about their various processes. We edited it out and confronted him about rephrasing instead of copying in future reports, which he apologized for and promised to be better in the future. However, while writing the complaint letter, one of our points was that he wasn’t putting in enough effort: aka. “his prepared sections of the report followed very closely to the documents they were taken from.”

We wanted to give some examples as evidence and I really almost wish that we didn’t. Looking at what he had originally written for two processes – not the summarized version that was submitted in the midterm report – we found 14 sentences out of the two pages that were directly copied word-for-word from documents without reference. Not just a couple like we originally expected – Fourteen. That is not acceptable!

Now comes the part where I feel really terrible because I know that when we submit the letter with the examples, we are good as pointing our fingers and crying “plagiarism!” at our design group member. For you who are not quite up to speed with the whole plagiarism thing, the worst outcome in expulsion from university. I would feel terrible for having him kicked out of the course let alone having him expelled. I guess I’m conflicted because I don’t think it is fair to the three of us who have put in a ton of time and effort to get the marks that we have and will get in this project to have to share those grades with someone who isn’t pulling their weight. On the other hand, if he is kicked out of the course, it means that he will have no chance of graduating this year. But it also comes down to the ethical issue at hand: if we are going to be professional engineers, we have to act with integrity and honesty and using someone else’s work, even if it is just a sentence, without being properly referenced goes against all that.

So I haven’t been able to do any studying this evening because all I can think about is how this situation might play out. I want to work it out with him and prevent the worst case scenarios of either being kicked out of the class or university entirely. But at the same time, I don’t want him to be getting credit for work he hasn’t done as it’s not fair to us. I really don’t know what to do, but at the same time, I do. We’re going to hand in our letter and see how things pan out from there. I hope I can handle the emotional stress either way.

Have you ever been in a similar situation? What did you do? How do you deal with confrontation?

Today at my parent’s church was a big celebration because a Bishop from Nigeria was visiting. It definitely wasn’t your average church service – there was lots of singing, praying and of course, dancing.

My brother busted out some moves with the pastor:

The women of the church did their own dance:

I love what they’re wearing – their hats? Amazing. I seriously want a similar outfit.

Even Mama Bean danced along:

The men drummed for a while and then they all got up to dance:

Even Mr. Bean went and joined them!

Doesn’t brother Bean look spiffy?

With all the dancing and singing, I can understand how church in Nigeria can easily be 5 hours long!

What’s the most interesting church service you’ve been to?

Last Monday, Mr. Bean’s last grandpa passed away at the ripe old age of 92. He was a very gentle soul who was happy to just be – of the three times I met him, he was content to watch Mr. Bean and I play crib, to paint, to watch the happy afro painting guy on TV and to just be around the excitement on our wedding day.  He will  be missed.

Mr. Bean went up to Saskatchewan with his family yesterday for the funeral – I am sad that I couldn’t go. Any and all prayers for Mr. Bean and his family would be appreciated. Thank you.