Lums Pond State Park, Bear, Delaware
Simeon and Levi are brothers – their swords are weapons of violence. Let me not enter their council, let me not join their assembly, for they have killed men in their anger and hamstrung oxen as they pleased. Cursed be their anger, so fierce, and their fury, so cruel! I will scatter them in Jacob and disperse them in Israel. ~ Genesis 49:5-7 ‘Simeon and Levi the Wrathful’. I find it interesting that Jacob has put these two together (sons #2&3), rather than giving separate blessings, but I have no answer as to why. Back in Chapter 34, we learned about how the two of them murdered an entire town because they believed the prince defiled their sister, Dinah. God makes a distinction between vengeance and holy war. He tells us, “vengeance is mine” (Deuteronomy 32:35). He calls His people to His Holy Wars in order to accomplish His Purpose, but He also calls us to Love. And no matter how we may feel, vengeance is a lot different than Holy wars. Holy wars (like the Israelite’s claiming the Promised Land), are God ordained and sanctioned. Vengeance comes from man himself – trying to ‘get even’ with someone you perceived as having hurt you somehow. In Joshua’s time, Simeon’s clan was given land within Judah (because Judah’s portion was more than they needed), which included the town of Beersheba. Their clan eventually disappeared as a clan, absorbed into other people groups. Levi’s descendants were never given land. Instead, they were given 48 cities all throughout Israel (Numbers 18:23-24; 35:1-8; Joshua 21:1-45) after God bestowed the priesthood on them for their zealousness in defending Him during the golden calf incident (Exodus 32:25-29).
By the way, the boundaries for each tribe were set up when, “Joshua then cast lots for them in Shiloh, in the presence of the LROD, and there he distributed the land to the Israelites according to their tribal divisions.” ~ Joshua 18:10
On the 29th, I stayed home blog-working, but Blaine biked from Delaware to Maryland and back again!
And then he baked a three-tiered, mousse-filled brownie cake for my birthday coming up in a few days. We may have started eating it early, but it’s so rich, I’ll bet we’re still eating it at least a week after my birthday. 😊
So delicious! Here’s the recipe in case you want to try it out! Just be aware, that while the recipe is on the back of the brownie box, it doesn’t tell you to chill the mousse mix, just cool it. It needs to be chilled in order for it to whip up nice. And the cake is better the next day once everything has properly solidified. Enjoy!
BROWNIE CAKE (Ghiradelli Ombre Brownie Cake)
2 boxes Ghiradelli Dark Chocolate Brownie Mix
½ C. water
1 C. vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 C. each 60% cacao, Milk Chocolate, and white Ghiradelli chips
2 ¼ C. heavy whipping cream, DIVIDED
¾ C. light Karo syrup
Preheat oven to 325⁰.
Lightly grease and line 3 – 8” round cake pans with parchment paper cut to the size of the bottom of the pans.
Prepare the double batch of brownie mix, using the first 4 ingredients. Divide the batter into three equal portions in the cake pans.
Bake 38-40 minutes. Do NOT overbake. Cool completely before removing from pans. (For 9” round pans, bake 25-30 minutes)
FOR GANACHE:
Place each type of chips into 3 bowls. Heat cream on stovetop or in microwave until it just boils. Immediately pour ¾ C. of cream over each type of chips, stirring until the chocolate melts.
Add ¼ C. corn syrup to each batch, stirring until shiny.
Let chill for 2 hours in the refrigerator before whipping with an electric mixer until fluffy. Spread a different type of chocolate between each layer. Layers should be: plate (or other container), brownie, white chocolate, brownie, milk chocolate, brownie, dark chocolate. Don’t ‘ice’ the sides.
Store in refrigerator.
Serves at least 12. Takes at least four hours to make with a toaster oven, since you can only bake one layer of brownies at a time.
HINT: The whipping cream must be chilled before beating, otherwise, it won’t fluff.
Also, this is an exceedingly rich cake – more so that the Hersheys Special dark chocolate cake.
Slice pieces accordingly. And it’s better the next day for some reason.
OMBRE: a pattern in which colors or tones fade into one another:
It’s good I rested because the next day, we got up to no plans whatsoever for our day. Can you even imagine that?!? Well, it’s true!
Suddenly, we had a half day planned – “Let’s ride our bikes over to Delaware City and catch the ferry to Fort Delaware.”
It was a nice ride (remember the 20-miler in a hurricane from the other day?) back to the Historic Delaware City. We even saw dolphins in the river!
The trip was somewhat later this morning, arriving in town the same time we got back home last time. We had a 30-minute wait for the ferry to the fort which ended up being much more than we expected. We’d been thinking a short ferry ride to the fort, stroll around looking at ruins, then home.
The ferry port is right here.
It was a good little distance from the dock.
Once we arrived at the fort people were dressed in period clothes from 1864. And the place was hardly ruins. It’s still intact! We talked with several people – – Deb the laundress, the mother of General Albin F. Schoepf, the man in charge of the fort in 1864, one of the cooks, and the guy who oversees munitions. We ended up spending 2 ½ hours there! Good thing we brought a small lunch with us!
I found information about the fort on ude.edu and onlyinyourstate.com. I just blended them together along with a few of my own comments. 😊
In the early days of the Civil War, prison life at Fort Delaware on Pea Patch Island (just six acres) in the Delaware River was, by most accounts, tolerable. In its first year of operation in 1862, the population varied from 3,434 prisoners in July to only 123 later that year due to routine prisoner exchanges between the North and the South. While the prisoners were mostly Confederate soldiers and officers, some notable political prisoners also were held there.
By August 1863, however, the fort’s population had swollen to over 12,000 due to the influx of prisoners from the battles at Vicksburg and Gettysburg. There were just 300 Union guards. One of the re-enactors told us that prisoners didn’t really try to escape too often because if you tried and didn’t make it, you were shot. In addition, they were almost all suffering from ill-health – both mentally and physically.
One of the prisoners, Captain John S. Swann, journaled about his experience: “We formed in line and marched to the mess hall… each prisoner took one ration. The bread was made of rye and wheat flour, well cooked, but the piece very small, about half enough for a well man. The meat a small chunk of beef… mostly bone. It was cut up very carelessly and very small, not half a ration. Some days the bread was substituted with crackers, and these were hard days on us.”
The brick-and-granite fort, the largest in existence in the United States when completed in 1859, originally was designed as a harbor defense — to keep hostile invaders from sailing upstream to the ports of New Castle, Wilmington and Philadelphia — not to hold prisoners of war.
Wooden barracks sprang up across the island, which was 75 acres at the time, to imprison the growing masses as the Civil War raged on and prisoner exchanges were curtailed.
This sea of humanity, coupled with the stifling heat and humidity of summer and the freezing cold in winter, incubated an epidemic of smallpox and other diseases at Fort Delaware. Lice and bedbugs abounded. Poor nutrition and a lack of water lead to scurvy, dysentery, and diarrhea.
In the end, some 2,400 men — Confederate prisoners, as well as Union guards — would wind up in coffins and be transported across river for burial at Finn’s Point cemetery in New Jersey.
Not surprisingly, some prisoners at Fort Delaware would risk their lives in the swift current of the Delaware River in hopes of reaching shore and then venturing south on the “reverse underground railroad.” According to recent research, 64-100 escaped the fort, but how many reached home is unknown.
I found this early sewing machine fascinating!
I love how it turned out!
It was stunning!
In person, it looked like a giant stained-glass window!
It was one of the most beautiful things we’ve ever seen!
Can’t even begin to fathom what Heaven will be like!
The Rangers tried to dissuade them, but to no avail. : )
The ride home was windy again, and because it was late today, the heat index was up and riding home was like trailing behind a jet engine on a runway. Ugh!!
As soon as I got home, I set the shower to pool water. Yes, we have settings, don’t you? Normally I go for hot springs, but not today. I felt much better afterwards. 😊
That’s it for today – except for eating another slice of cake, of course!