Pumpkin Muffins

2 1/4 cups plain flour

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons pumpkin-pie spice

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup milk

3/4 cup solid-pack pumpkin

1/2 cup packet brown sugar

4 tablespoons margarine or butter, melted

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 eggs

1/2 cup pecans, toasted and chopped

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Grease twelve muffin-pan cups.
2. In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, pumpkin-pie spice, and salt.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk, milk, pumpkin, brown sugar, melted margarine or butter, vanilla, and eggs until blended
4. Pour into flour mixture and stir until just moistened.
5. Spoon into muffin-pan cups. Sprinkle tops with chopped pecans.
6. Bake 25 to 30 minutes, check with a toothpick to see if center of muffin comes out clean. Immediately remove from pan. Serve warm or cool completely on wire rack may be reheated.

Jack O'Lantern Cookies

9 ounces chocolate wafer cookies

1/2 cup peanut butter,smooth

24 ounces vanilla flavoured almond bark

Orange paste food colouring

Black licorice candy

1. Spread a small amount of peanut butter on the flat side of the cookies; top with remaining cookies.
2. Cut licorice into triangles and squares to make faces.
3. Melt almond bark following package directions.
4. Remove from heat and tint with food colouring.
5. Using tongs, dip each sandwich cookie in meted candy, coating completely.
6. Gently shake each cookie to remove excess coating.
7. Place on wire rack with waxed paper underneath.
8. Place licorice pieces on the cookies for faces.
9. Cool completely before removing from rack.

Knock, knock

Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Manuel.
Manuel who?
Manuel be sorry if you don't give me a treat!

Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Annie.
Annie who?
Annie body home?

Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Fred.
Fred who?
I'm Fred of witches!

Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Emma.
Emma who?
Emma 'fraid of ghosts, too!

Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Howl.
Howl who?
Howl I know you're not a ghost!

Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Wayne.
Wayne who?
Wayne can I eat my Halloween candy?

Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Philip.
Philip who?
Philip my bag with candy!

Halloween Riddles

What is a witch's favorite subject in school?

What do birds give out on Halloween?

What do little trees say on Halloween?

Why do witches wear name tags?

Why didn't the skeleton dance at the Halloween party?

What is a ghost's favorite ride?

Where do ghosts go shopping?

What turns off the lights on Halloween?

Why did the boy carry a clock and a bird on Halloween?

Ckeck out the answers with your English teacher!

Jack Who?!?

Jack O'Lantern

The Irish brought the tradition of the Jack O'Lantern to America. But, the original Jack O'Lantern was not a pumpkin.

The Jack O'Lantern legend goes back hundreds of years in Irish History. As the story goes, Stingy Jack was a miserable, old drunk who liked to play tricks on everyone: family, friends, his mother and even the Devil himself.

One day, he tricked the Devil into climbing up an apple tree. Once the Devil climbed up the apple tree, Stingy Jack hurriedly placed crosses around the trunk of the tree. The Devil was then unable to get down the tree. Stingy Jack made the Devil promise him not to take his soul when he died. Once the devil promised not to take his soul, Stingy Jack removed the crosses and let the Devil down.

Many years later, when Jack finally died, he went to the pearly gates of Heaven and was told by Saint Peter that he was too mean and too cruel and had led a miserable and worthless life on earth. He was not allowed to enter heaven.

He then went down to Hell and the Devil. The Devil kept his promise and would not allow him to enter Hell.

Now Jack was scared and had nowhere to go but to wander about forever in the darkness between heaven and hell. He asked the Devil how he could leave as there was no light. The Devil tossed him an ember from the flames of Hell to help him light his way. Jack placed the ember in a hollowed out Turnip, one of his favorite foods which he always carried around with him whenever he could steal one. For that day onward, Stingy Jack roamed the earth without a resting place, lighting his way as he went with his "Jack O'Lantern".

On all Hallow's eve, the Irish hollowed out Turnips, rutabagas, gourds, potatoes and beets. They placed a light in them to ward off evil spirits and keep Stingy Jack away. These were the original Jack O'Lanterns.

In the 1800's a couple of waves of Irish immigrants came to America. The Irish immigrants quickly discovered that Pumpkins were bigger and easier to carve out. So they used pumpkins for Jack O'Lanterns.

History of the Jack O' Lantern

Have fun!

Breathe!

With every waking breath I breathe

I see what life has dealt to me

With every sadness I deny

I feel a chance inside me die

Give me a taste of something new

To touch to hold to pull me through

Send me a guiding light that shines

Across this darkened life of mine

Breathe some soul in me

Breathe your gift of love to me

Breathe life to lay 'fore me

Breathe to make me breathe

For every man who built a home

A paper promise for his own

He fights against an open flow

Of lies and failures, we all know

To those who have and who have not

How can you live with what you've got?

Give me a touch of something sure

I could be happy evermore

Breathe some soul in me

Breathe your gift of love to me

Breathe life to lay 'fore me

To see to make me breathe

Breathe your honesty

Breathe your innocence to me

Breathe your word and set me free

Breathe to make me breathe

This life prepares the strangest things

The dreams we dream of what life brings

The highest highs can turn around

To sow love's seeds on stony ground

Breathe

Breathe

Breathe some soul in me

Breathe your gift of love to me

Breathe life to lay 'fore me

To see to make me breathe

Breathe your honesty

Breathe your innocence to me

Breathe your word and set me free

Breathe to make me breathe

Midge Ure, Breathe

The importance of a healthy life... :)

Do you know...

Cool!

See U Later Alligator...

Book Cover...only for cat lovers

On Cats

Doris Lessing's love affair with cats began at a young age, when she became intrigued with the semi-feral creatures on the African farm where she grew up.

Her fascination remained undiminished by the handsome domesticated creatureswho shared her flats and her life in London, and grew into real love with the awkwardly lovable El Magnifico, the last cat to share her home.
Consisting of the celebrated collection of stories, Particularly Cats and Rufus the Survivor, and the memoir,

The Old Age of El Magnifico, this book brilliantly evokes the subtleties of feline existence.

No other writer conveys so truthfully the real interdependence of humans and cats or convinces us with such stunning recognition of the reasons why cats really matter.

Nobel Prize for Literature

Doris Lessing was born Doris May Tayler in Persia (now Iran) on October 22, 1919. Both of her parents were British: her father was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, the family moved to the British colony in Southern Rhodesia - now Zimbabwe.

Lessing has described her childhood as an uneven mix of some pleasure and much pain. The natural world, which she explored with her brother, Harry, was one retreat from an otherwise miserable existence. Her mother, obsessed with raising a proper daughter, enforced a rigid system of rules and hygiene at home, then installed Doris in a convent school, where nuns terrified their charges with stories of hell and damnation. Lessing was later sent to an all-girls high school in the capital of Salisbury, from which she soon dropped out. She was thirteen; and it was the end of her formal education.

But like other women writers from southern African who did not graduate from high school, Lessing made herself into a self-educated intellectual.

The parcels of books ordered from London fed her imagination, laying out other worlds to escape into. Lessing's early reading included Dickens, Scott, Stevenson, Kipling; later she discovered D.H. Lawrence, Stendhal, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky.

Bedtime stories also nurtured her youth: her mother told them to the children and Doris herself kept her younger brother awake, spinning out tales. Doris's early years were also spent absorbing her fathers bitter memories of World War I, taking them in as a kind of "poison."

In flight from her mother, Lessing left home when she was fifteen and took a job as a nursemaid.

In 1937 she moved to Salisbury, where she worked as a telephone operator for a year. At nineteen, she married Frank Wisdom, and had two children. A few years later, feeling trapped in a persona that she feared would destroy her, she left her family, remaining in Salisbury. Soon she was drawn to the like-minded members of the Left Book Club, a group of Communists "who read everything, and who did not think it remarkable to read." Gottfried Lessing was a central member of the group; shortly after she joined, they married and had a son.
During the postwar years, Lessing became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist movement, which she left altogether in 1954.

By 1949, Lessing had moved to London with her young son. That year, she also published her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, and began her career as a professional writer.

Lessing's fiction is deeply autobiographical, much of it emerging out of her experiences in Africa. Drawing upon her childhood memories and her serious engagement with politics and social concerns, Lessing has written about the clash of cultures, the gross injustices of racial inequality, the struggle among opposing elements within an individuals own personality, and the conflict between the individual conscience and the collective good. Her stories and novellas set in Africa, published during the fifties and early sixties, decry the dispossession of black Africans by white colonials, and expose the sterility of the white culture in southern Africa. In 1956, in response to Lessing's courageous outspokenness, she was declared a prohibited alien in both Southern Rhodesia and South Africa.

Over the years, Lessing has attempted to accommodate what she admires in the novels of the nineteenth century - their "climate of ethical judgement" - to the demands of twentieth-century ideas about consciousness and time.

Live Aid

Live Aid was a multi-venue rock music concert held on July 13, 1985 The event was organised by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure in order to raise funds for famine relief in Ethiopia.

Twelve years later, they still don't know it's Xmas time.

It's Christmas time

There's no need to be afraid

At Christmas time, we let in light and we banish shade

And in our world of plenty we can spread a smile of joy

Throw your arms around the world at Christmas time

But say a prayer

Pray for the other ones

At Christmas time it's hard, but when you're having fun

There's a world outside your window

And it's a world of dread and fear

Where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears

And the Christmas bells that ring there

Are the clanging chimes of doom

Well tonight thank God it's them instead of you

And there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas time

The greatest gift they'll get this year is life

(Oooh)

Where nothing ever grows

No rain nor rivers flow

Do they know it's Christmas time at all

(Here's to you)

raise a glass for everyone

(Here's to them)

underneath that burning sun

Do they know it's Christmas time at all

Feed the world, feed the world, feed the world

Let them know it's Christmas time again

Feed the world

Let them know it's Christmas time again

Feed the world

Let them know it's Christmas time again

Feed the world

Let them know it's Christmas time again

Feed the world

Let them know it's Christmas time again

World Day to Overcome Extreme Poverty

Why the Campaign?

Campaign Aims

1.Support and put into contact those who are taking action and those who wish to take action with people in extreme poverty across the world, to build a different way of fighting against poverty. That is to say, a way which respects everyone’s dignity, which is firmly based on the thinking and suggestions of people in poverty, with the goal of ending poverty.

2.Show that people taking action in this way are not isolated cases but already make up a social movement across the world. Certainly they are a minority, but a very dynamic one, creating real changes in all fields: access to housing, health care, education, work, training, new technologies, citizenship, culture, family life etc. Encourage new individuals to get involved to better understand the reality of extreme poverty and the ways of taking action, so that this social movement will develop. It is a matter of reaching all social circles and all age groups in as many countries as possible.

3.Question common philosophical, cultural and religious thinking, and the academic and artistic worlds, so that they take into account this collective effort to struggle against poverty.

4.Question public authorities at all levels - local, national and international - to ask them to recognise the energy of this social movement and to contribute to it.

Please pay attention to the link extreme poverty. It is not pretty to watch, but sadly it is the cruel reality that you also live in.

Help to put and end to poverty!

Let's cook!

10 Minute Fruit & Cheese Salad
This 10-minute salad offers you a quick and easy way to enjoy the delicious combination of flavors of the fruit, cheese and salad greens while receiving their many healthy benefits. It is a perfect light and cool dish on a warm day.

Prep and Cook Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

¾ cup green seedless grapes
3 fresh apricots, cut into eighths
3 dried figs sliced medium thick
½ lb mixed salad greens
2 TBS fresh lemon juice
salt and cracked black pepper to taste
extra virgin olive oil to taste
3oz goat or gorgonzola cheese
*optional ( ¼ lb sliced turkey breast cut into bite size pieces)

Directions:
Toss all ingredients together and serve. Top with goat or gorgonzola cheese.

Think about it!

Obesity is a condition in which the natural energy reserve, increased to a point where it is associated with certain healh conditions or increased mortality.
Although obesity is an individual clinical condition, it is increasingly viewed as a serious and growing public health problem: excessive body weight has been shown to predispose to various diseases, particularly cardiovascular diseases, diabetes mellitus type 2, sleep apnea and osteoarthritis.
We must have a balanced diet in order to prevent health problems!
We are what we eat! Don't forget to check out the pyramid food!

Family Ties

October 16

World Food Day is celebrated every year on 16 October to commemorate the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in 1945. World Food Day aims to heighten public awareness of the plight of the world's hungry and malnourished and to encourage people worldwide to take action against hunger. More than 150 countries observe this event every year. In the United States, 450 national, private voluntary organizations sponsor World Food Day, and local groups are active in almost every community. First observed in 1981, each year World Food Day highlights a particular theme on which to focus activities.

Friends of the Earth

Learn about helping to protect our Earth.

Earth Day is a special time to remind everyone of our responsibility.

Find more about this topic with Cyber Starter.

Link up to it and tell us about it!