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• I've been wanting to make a proper English Trifle for quite some time, but two days ago I finally decided to give it a try. But me being me, I thought it would be even better if I challenge myself by using this as an opportunity to photo-document the recpie just like in  a cookbook.

(Actually, when I was a kid I liked to play "cooking-show")

So I'll quit yapping and just show it to ya.

Part 1 - The Puddin'

• 2 T cornstarch
• 1/2 C sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 C milk
• 2 T butter
• 1 t vanilla

In a 2-quart saucepan, stir together the cornstarch and sugar completely.

Next, stir in the egg and butter and blend until the mixture is smooth and creamy. If you do this right, your pudding ought not be lumpy.

Next, begin adding the milk and continue stirring.

Once you have added all the mlik, begin cooking over low heat and cook, stirring almost constantly. This is important, because you do not want your milk to scauld or worse yet, stick to your pan. On my gas range it only took about 10 minutes.

(For those who are wondering, the variant for chocolate pudding is simple. Just put in 2 or 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder when you are mixing your sugar and cornstarch)

Bring the pudding to a very slow boil. It will thicken in an instant if you are not watching and then scauld and stick if it thinks it can get away with it behind your back, so be ready.

Add the vanilla last. I prefer the clear artificial stuff, but any ol' 'nilla will do.

Remove from heat and quickly turn the pudding out into a mixing bowl. I recommend using a large rubber spatula because those are the most fun to lick.

(Maybe that is why I don't really have my own cooking show and have to pretend, ya think?)

Lastly, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, making sure the wrap actually touches the surface of the pudding. This keeps it from growing "skin" 

Part 2 - The Razz

After your pudding has had time to chill (about 2 hours), it is ready to join the other ingredients and be part of a trifle.

You will need..

• Angel food cake (or any light cake will do)
• raspberries (though I used raspberry preserves)
• 2 -3 cups whipped creme (nondairy works fine too)
• finely chopped nuts (optional--I recommend walnuts or almonds)

Break up the angel food cake into fingertip-sized bites.

Next, take the juice of your berries (or water down a few spoonfuls of the preserves) and add to your cake bites.

Then, mix together the pudding and about 2 cups of the whipped creme. This will make your pudding light and fluffy and somewhat mousse-esque.

Now comes the fun part.

Start by putting a layer of cake into the bottom of whatever you plan to serve the trifle in. My recipe yields 3 12 oz. drinking glasses because I am still too uncouth to own any parfait glasses.

Next, layer in a spoonful of pure raspberries or preserves. Ice cream scoop is excellent for that job.  Try not to overdo it with the preserves, becaue they are very sweet.

Then, scoop in about 3 good spoonfuls of the pudding, being careful always not to smear up the inside of the glass. You want the layers to be distinct and as even as possible.

(If you opt for nuts, put them on top of the berries before the pudding.

Keep layering as necessary right up to the rim.

FINALLY comes the whipped creme. You can just spoon it on, but if you want to be fancy-schmancy, you

can use a forcing bag and a star-tip. (If you don't have a fancy bag and tip, use a sandwich baggie with a tiny hole cut in one corner to swirl the creme onto your trifle.

Well..below is the finished product...and would you believe it matches my wallpaper perfectly? Yes, it tastes pretty good too, though a bit sweet. Next time I will pick up berries and nuts and do it up all the way.

One last thing, adding up the cost of the preserves ($1) and the whipped topping ($1) and the cake ($.60 because the bakery overbaked), the sugar, butter, vanilla eggs and cornstarch ($.50) and milk ($.90), the total cost per dessert is somewhere around  $1.35 apiece...which isn't bad at all by dessert-cafe standards.

Now that I've done trifle, I feel confident I can make a reasonably decent tiramisu for around the same price.

Fort Matanzas National Monument is located just outside of St. Augustine on Rattlesnake Island. We actually had to drive out on Anastasia Island to get to the visitor center, and then take a pontoon ferry out to the fort. The original fortification there had been a wooden stockade and watchtower, but a more permanent stone fort was built by the Spanish after the British besieged St.Augustine in 1740.

Here is a view from the boat.

The fort has been heavily restored and now sports four cannon, though the original had not so many. The wooden staircase leads to the upper level where the officer slept. The enlisted men (six or seven usually) slept in the barracks below the officers' level. The lowermost part of the fort housed a cistern for storing fresh water. From the officers' quarters, one can climb a wooden ladder through a very small opening and gain access to the rooftop. The view from there is quite spectacular.

The guns are on a wooden platform, but the platform itself sits on a good solid stone parapet.  Rattlesnake Island is actually quite small.

That little bastion is the only one on this fort, unlike the Castillo de San Marcos. At one time the entire fort was covered in a smooth surface of white plaster, but the weather has eroded that away. The little tower is quite cozy. There is room enough for one person IF he or she is not terribly stout.

The single gun is (I believe) a 12-pounder or possibly a 24 pounder) I ought to know..but being that the tour only lasted an hour I had lots of photos to take and neglected the poor cannon. :(

The guns protected the inlet from British ships (and later from Spanish ships). There is a nice indepth history of the fort on the page I linked to above if you want to read more.

The lands around the fort are in part owned by the National Audubon Society as a wildlife sanctuary and are part of the Guana-Tolomato-Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve. Suffice it to say there is plenty of things for nature-lovers to see too.

For instance, this 300-year-old cedar tree. At this time there is an effort at the Matanzas National Monument to restore the historic plantlife by removing all species of plants that were introduced in the past 200 years. There is also a boardwalk nature trail near and around the visitor center. The island on which the fort itself is built is quite marshy and likely snakey too..so this photo of the cedar was as close-up as your intrepid photographer dared. 

Below are a few pics of the officers' quarters and barracks as they might have been furnished.

The room has a vaulted stone ceiling, and the powder magazine is actually built into a tiny nook in the curving part of the wall (see right of the first photo). In the little alcove around the powder magazine are baskets and barrels of provisions. The men garrisoned there might have been supplied with fruit, corn, or hard bread. Water had to be collected from rainstorms or brought in from the mainland.  The desk (right-middle photo) is a reproduction, though some of the colour-printed pictures and modern maps are a bit anachronistic. Note the crucifix on the wall. All soldiers of the Spanish army of that period had to be Catholics in good standing with the Church. The enlisted soldiers had a bit less personal space than the officer(s) above. In addition to themselves, they had all their muskets and gunnery equipment and impliments stacked in with them.

It is a great site to visit, and hopefully we will be going back this fall when we have more time for the nature trail.

Tune in sooooon for my final vacation posting of photos in and around St. Augustine including our lovely meals at Barnacle Bill's seafood restaurant.

I call this series "informal sitting" ...for the obvious reason.

 I'm not beautiful like you.

I'm beautiful like me.

Nothing fancy really..just me and the camera. No flash, no fancy diffused studio lights. No hairdressing or makeup. F-stop 8.0. Shutter speed 1 sec. ISO 160. I 'shopped the middle one quite a bit for effect, but the other two were simply cropped, nothing more.

And here's the two of us in real-life... or as real as we allow our lives to get.

These were made on the roof of Fort Matanzas just outside of St Augustine on Rattlesnake Island.

Pooky, with his cahiet and his stylo..talking on the phone to his mother.

Spike, with her camera bag and her "Life is good" tee-shirt..squinting at the sun and looking like a dweeb.

The first stop on our vacation was Fort King George in Darien, Georgia, where we got to watch what's called 'living history'. To celebrate Independence Day weekend (ironically enough), a group of volunteer history enthusiasts dressed themselves as the colonial (and that means Red Coats) garrison and took up residency in the restored blockhouse and outbuildings on the old fort site.

Imagine a whole weekend of getting to play in the biggest play-fort you've ever seen, shoot muskets and cannons for fun, and not have to hear the words 'Iphone' or 'MySpace' for an entire three days! 

Below are the reenactors portraying His Majesty's Independent Company of South Carolina (because there was no Georgia yet).

 

And when these gents finished shooting muskets, they shot artillery.

Now..for those of you who ask, YES those uniforms are rather hot and uncomfortable, NO none of those guys were actually alive during the Colonial period, NO they aren't shooting real bullets, and YES they actually are doing this because they like to. I used to do American Civil War reenacting and have heard all of those questions and even a few that were even more strange.

Below is one of the ladies who portrays a Colonial civilian lady. She was there serving up watermelon and lemonade to the park's visitors, but she also plays the flute, and she and one of the other reenactors who is a guitarist gave us a quick concert.

 Meanwhile,Codename:Pooky was seen going hither and thither with measuring stick, pen and paper. He is still working on his model (see my links to the left) and was proudly showing off the bits he has already completed. There are around a dozen different structures on the site, and on each of those structures a collective zillion wooden planks and shingles to represent. He hopes it will be finished by the fall when our next vacation rolls around.

 

 

It's one of those funny things about being a photographer. You NEVER get to be in holiday snapshots yourself!

I was really excited to get to see the artillery demonstration. In spite of my genderly femalenessity, I used to be part of a reenacting Civil War artillery unit..and in spite of having given up the hobby for about ten years now I STILL miss the big guns. I wonder how much I'd have to beg or bribe any of the FKG volunteers for a chance to put on the red coat and hold the linstock.

I'm not sure what caliber the cannons at Fort King George are. They look like 24-pounders. For them of you not in the know, that means the ball they shoot weighs 24 pounds. The guns themselves are considerably heavier..especially when one rolls over your foot.

 What's happening in the first picture is the powder and ball being rammed down the muzzle of the gun while the gunner on the right covers the touch-hole to prevent embers from a previous firing from setting off the new charge while the rammer-man is still loading.  In the next picture, they are pushing the gun forward into the earthen wall that surrounds the fort. In the third picture, the priming has been lit and there is a brief but anxious few moments of hissing before....

YES, it is recommended that you wear ear-protection...and YES I am now a little bit deaf.

They also have a 12-pounder mortar there, but we did not get to see it shoot. My spouse (a.k.a. Pookypedia) informs me that the GR painted on the back of the mortar bed stands for "George Rex"

Below, we got to see a few different kinds of cannon ammunition. Not only do they shoot balls, but they shot exploding shells, grape-shot (usually nine smaller balls arranged in three layers of three), chain shot (two balls connected by a length of chain for shooting at ships' rigging) and bar shot (looks like a little dumbell)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And of course, since this IS a living history, there was plenty of non-military equipment for people to look at, ask about, take pictures of, and if they ask nicely, to actually handle. Nope, no red-velvet-ropes here!

To the right is a bag of coffee beans (the second-best thing about the discovery of the New World..right behind chocolate), and a tin candle-lantern. I also have scads of pics of knives, muskets, swords, canteens, eating utinsels, etc..but it's getting late..and maybe you're getting just a teeny bit bored maybe?

Lastly, this one is my favourite picture... because believe it or not, I'm usually a bit shy about asking people to be in my pictures..but most (excluding some) reenactors like seeing their visages captured in glorious phototivity...and the red uniform is just so dang COOL!

This 'is' Colonal John "Tuscarora Jack" Barnwell.

So this concludes Act II, but check back soon. I still need to crop and edit tons more pics, including our dinner in St. Augustine and Fort Matanzas.

The reader may note that Act 1 is actually the last day of our vacation in St. Augustine, and that Acts 2 and 3 will come afterward. I kinda wanted to mix it up like Quinton Tarantino so people would think I was 'cutting edge' and make me filthy rich.... or maybe it's to do with the fact that these were the first set of pics I downloaded and was dying to show them off first.

There's a shrine in St. Augustine called Our Lady of La Leche, which I have talked about here before way back in February when I first joined Vox. It may be one of the prettiest and most peaceful places on this earth, and if you are ever in the area... even if you are a Protestant..or even if you are a Pagan..you owe it to yourself to visit. I admit I am not a terribly devout person, at least not in the traditional sense, but this place (as Victor Hugo so eloquently phrased it) 'belongs to God'.

First..for those just tuning in who missed my first posts back in February, here are a few from my first trip of the chapel itself.

The modern chapel is of stone, and was built as a restoration on the original site sometime around the turn of the last century. The web site goes into more detail about the restorations, but the design is meant to resemble Spanish architecture of the 16th century.

The chapel is a favoured spot  for pilgrims who are either new mothers, mothers-to-be, or who wish to pray for any new soul's safe delivery into the world.

On the same site, there are several other smaller and more rustic shrines, including one which commemorates the first Mass ever held in North America.

And being that this site is maintained by the Franciscans, there are gardens galore and more tamed squirrels and birds than you can shake a stick at.

Suffice to say, it is a fantastic place for photography.

 

I wish my other photos of the interior of the chapel had turned out so well. The light was low and I did not want to disturb the tranquility with my flashbulb. Anyway, here are the candles.

 

The windows in the background are in the process of restoration right now. I wish I had more time to do a study of this place, but if you want to see more, the web site has a few pictures too.

Here is a closeup of the sculpture of St. Peter which is over the doorway.

 

And here are several shots of the local flora. (The fauna were for the most part being camera-shy. Next time I will bribe them with nuts or cow-corn)

 

And next are several of the works in stone. There is a memorial cemetary on the grounds with graves dating back at least 300 years.

There is a Christ in bronze...

 

And of course, St. Francis of Assisi.

 

In addition to the gardens and shrines, there is a gift-shop which sells all manner of books, postcards, figurines, crucifixes, rosaries, prayer cards, medals and other religious icons. We always pick up plenty of prayer cards to take back to the people we work with.

Come back soon for my pics of Fort King George and more St Augustine at night.

In honor of Canada Day, show us your favorite Canadian.

This one's from my husband's reliquery.. cir. 1972.  To quote the Hanson brothers, "..old-time hockey!"

Share a song you listened to in 6th grade.

The YouTube link  >>  Frankie Smith - Double Dutch Bus

I think my spouse is scared.. but this song STILL makes me want to get my boogie on!

What's making you smile today?

I just spent $200 on getting the sliding glass door to my back porch repaired. Ever since I moved in, the window has looked as if somebody had spilled milk down it, but the white gunk was in the middle of the double-pane plexiglass and there wasn't much I could do about it but explain to everybody who saw it. "Yes, I DO know there's such thing as window cleaner".

So I've been sitting here looking out my beautiful crystal-clear windows and admiring my backyard.

Man..my hedges need a trim. 

I am not generally the sort of person who goes shopping. That is not to say I am a person who does not like to buy things, nor am I a tightwad, but over the years I have gotten so used to saving up for rainy days and emergencies that I tend to hold money forever and only buy non-necessity things when I have plenty saved up already.

BUT, my photo story (posted about a week ago) won first prize at the Photo Quest group, and that meant not only the happiness of having won, but also a gift certificate for $25 at Amazon.com....and then just yesterday my mother-in-law sent me a birthday card with a $25 check in.

So..you know what?  I went shopping!

And now I have GOODIES on the way!  YAY! 

I've ordered a set of filters for my camera. For years I've been wanting a UV filter and a polarizer, but could not afford them from the Olympus site.

I love Amazon.

Just a week or so ago I received a "deluxe set" for my camera from Amazon which consisted of two lithium batteries, a AC/DC charger with auto cigarette-lighter adaptor, and a cleaning kit for the camera. I is ready to go.

Did I mention I LOVE Amazon?

My next Amazon wish-list quest is a digital photo frame. I'm starting a penny-jar and doing my homework so I can get the right one when I get enough money saved. I've got my eye on a 10" Kodak Easy Share at the moment, but as always am open to recommendations from friends and others who know more about such things.