Category: My Family

Without a family, one seldom thinks long term

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a South African Braii… in California?

Our trial balloon for the South African Braii!

Have you ever started a series of new recipes? Have you wondered whether they would be a hit… or a colossal flop? Well, the sure fire way to see if something new works is to do a small trial run… we did… fantastic!

Karen had returned home from her internship in South Africa with Total Media and has just ‘graduated” with her Masters in Public Relations from one of my alma maters… the University of Southern California! With all these excuses to celebrate, we couldn’t resist… besides, if the menu flops it is better to have small, manageable group mad at you than a large crowd looking for a rope!

The anticipation was deafening!

Karen wrote up the Braii …. and I am sure she’ll  have a post to follow! Now, we can work up to the big event!

 

Roger Freberg

PS… the wine of South Africa was exquisite… and yes, there was much Pinotage!

 

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Laura’s Amarula Carrot Cake!

Laura's Wonderful Carrot Cake!

Something special happens when you get a bunch of ‘foodies’ together… recipes and ideas just come out and an event gets planned!

Laura  and  Karen  put their heads together and found a wonderful recipe for Carrot Cake utilizing two ingredients that were surprising: apricot and  Amarula!  Their recipe also contains pineapple but Laura has added that for thirty years, so no surprise. What was interesting was how the apricot and the Amarula added something very special.

Here’s  Laura’s adaptation of her own recipe  and as Laura is fond of saying, “Bake it for someone you love!”

Roger Freberg

Now all we need is the Ostruducken!

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Only YOU can invest in YOUR future!

What, me worry?

Here is my daughter  Karen  relaxing at our home in San Luis Obispo. My girls often take over my favorite spots when they come home… and that’s fine with me. They work hard, play hard and from time to time they let me spoil them…. they make me proud.

On Saturday, I am fixing a South African ‘Welcome Home & Happy ‘SC Graduation’ Celebration… a little respite from Jenny Craig… a ‘planned’ excursion into gastronomical delights! Oh yes,  Kristin  gets the same treatment when she comes home in December: Dad’s pancakes, Turducken, barbecued ribs & specialty baked beans.  They tell me, these are the ‘smells and sounds of home that they love.

I believe that parents are the ‘pit crew’ for the ‘next …  greatest generation.’ As I have often said to young people,” if you are standing on the podium having a gold medal put around your neck… then someone was successful in seeing that you got your chance… but it was your hard work that got you there.”

Fight On!

Roger Freberg

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Trojan Football is Coming! Step 1 — get tickets!

worth their weight in gold!

Step 1: Get the tickets!

For those who know and care… the time is arriving when your long awaited Southern California Trojan Season Tickets will arrive! This happened to me today!

Step 2: WHO gets to go?

This is always a challenge. Karen has graduated from USC and is now heading for her Ph.D. at the University of Tennessee , so she’s not in consideration. Kristin will probably attend one of the games, my guess will be the USC-UCLA game — which should be a tale of revenge and city bragging rights.

Left over tickets? heh heh, silly bruins.

Step 3: Fight on! Let the season begin!

Roger Freberg

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Do something different, just for fun!

Laura's fun timeI am reminded about an old Star Trek that stated “the more complex the mind, the more the necessity for the simplicity of play.”

For folks whose work is less active, they might find more pleasure if their hobbies and fun activities contain an largely physical role.

Some of my more intelligent and sedentary relatives would spend their non working hours rebuilding their home, painting and gardening… 

As for me, I have always enjoyed doing things very different that my true vocation. Investing my time exploring new aspects of our world has always had an interest.

By the way, speaking of fun, although I am not at all a soccer fan… I congratulate all of Iraq over their recent victory!

On a related note….

“The most spiritual men, as the strongest, find their happiness where others would find their destruction: in the labyrinth, in hardness against themselves and others, in experiments. Their joy is self-conquest. Difficult tasks are a privilege to them, to play with burdens that crush others, a recreation. They are the most venerable kind of man: that does not preclude their being the most cheerful and the kindliest.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche   

 

Roger Freberg

PS. My wife just finished painting the kitchen…. she had fun doing it… but the important thing was that … I didn’t have to do it!