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Showing posts from July, 2008

Why?

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People who don't Think probably don't have Brains; rather, they have grey fluff that's blown into their heads by mistake.” Winnie the Pooh Even though I'm having some deep thoughts, today I'm feeling like I have grey fluff between my ears! But don't you just love Pooh's wisdom? When all else fails, I feel like I can call on a bear of very little brain to have an answer. Except, maybe, for questions like those that follow. I spend what I think is an inordinate amount of time at the grocery store. Granted, I break up - which really means double - my shopping trips so I can buy the basics like paper products, toiletries and other things not on my list but I consider gotta haves at a one-stop-shop place like Walmart, and the meat, produce and bread at Publix. It's more expensive that way, but I've learned - the hard way - that giant megastore produce is not the freshest and does not have the same amount of staying power. It could be all in my head, but t...

Depression Busters

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"The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it." Richar d Bach According to a recent news article scientists have discovered that chimpanzees often use hugs and kisses the same way as humans to comfort, sympathize and decrease stress in fellow chimps. "Researchers found that stress was reduced in chimps that were victims of aggression if a 3rd party chimp stepped in to offer consolation." What makes this behavior interesting is that it is only used after a conflict. "This study removes doubt that consolation really does what the term suggestsL provide relive to distressed parties after conflict. The evidence is compelling and makes it likely that consolation behavior is an expression empathy," said Dr. Frans de Wall of the Yerkes Primate Center at Emory University . [ http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/06/16/chimp-hug-kiss.html , Chimps Hug, Kiss to Show Support, Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press] I found this information of particular inter...

Welcome to the world, Chase Z - P.S.

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"Babies are such a nice way to start people." Don Herrold Dear Chase, Good gracious, what was I thinking? You are just a little tyke and before you can do all that lofty "chasing" you've got to learn to walk. Not to mention, sleeping through the night, eating on some kind of schedule, holding your head up, smiling and cooing. I think all that other stuff is good information. I hope that you will be able to use it to your advantage as you grow up. But until then, here's some advice that is more age appropriate: Chase butterflies and fireflies on a warm summer day. Listen for the sound of garbage trucks and fire engines. Chase them to the end of the street. Chase your sisters with green spotted toads. Chase raindrops. Jump in puddles. Make mud pies. When a spoon won't work, chase peas around your plate with your fingers. Chase away the blues by looking at big puffy clouds while laying on your back in a field of soft green grass. Jumping in a pile of crisp...

Oops! I forgot!

"Grandmas don't just say "that's nice" -- they reel back and roll their eyes and throw up their hands and smile. You get your money's worth out of grandmas." Author unknown Well, I didn't actually forget to add this to last night's post. I was tired and went to bed. Plus, my food posts and lists of recipes are way behind so basically I gotta say what the hay! This recipe has become one of my sister Linda's holiday traditions. They are easy to make, less time consuming than decorated sugar cookies and quite tasty. Enjoy! Merry ME P.S. BEWARE: I googled Grannie Cookies and was surprised to find that it actually leads to what looks like a grandmother's porn site. What's that all about? When I clicked on one of the sites that looked like it had an actually recipe, the last ingredient listed was 2 penises. Huh? The good news, I guess, is that nowhere in the actual recipe did they say to chop up and stir in the penises. I suppose they were ...

Welcome to the world Chase Z !

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"Good men must die, but death cannot kill their names" Proverb While I fumed about the small stuff last week a perfectly formed miracle, small by some standards, infinite by others was about to take place. On July 11 the newest member of my extended family was born. My daughter’s husband’s brother’s wife gave birth to their third child and first son. That makes me, in a round-about-extended way, a grandmother, doesn’t it? I wish I could hold him in my arms and look into what I’m sure are big round brown eyes and tell him how special he is. Alas, it’s true what they say … you can’t always get what you want. While his mom and dad are busy juggling feeding schedules and diaper changes, I’m several hundred miles away doing the same thing except the object of my concern is at the other end of the age spectrum. The next best thing to rocking him in the middle of the night will have to be this letter …. Dear Chase, Welcome to the world, little man! Everyone is so glad that you are ...

R&R

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“Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering.” Winnie The Pooh Let's face it, either there is just nothing to say about food on a daily basis, or I'm just not any good at every day posts. Probably the latter is closer to the truth. My intentions are always good at the beginning of the month, but as the days wear on I just lose my steam. A part of me feels bad that I seem to be utterly unable to follow through on this commitment, and another part of me thinks what's the big deal. Yesteday I had a choice. Write about food or take off with my Sweetie for a meritorious day off. Guess what I chose? We headed for the small town of Waldo which is best known for being a speed trap between Jacksonville and Gainesville. Our plan was to wander through the flea market and buy fresh fruit at the Farmer's Market. What we hadn't planned on was the rain. As we neared our destination the s...

What a difference a day makes

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"Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain." Henry David Thoreau After my Walmart experience I figured I'd do better to spend my time today outside with the birds and snakes and lizards. My original goal was to repot some plants. I did that, got covered in dirt, then moved on to unsightly weeds. I crawled around on the ground, reaching inside hedges pulling up bits and pieces of a vine that used to be called "wandering Jew" when it was sold as a houseplant. I don't know the religion of the stuff I was pulling up, but it did indeed wander. Perhaps because of the early morning heat, I didn't see too many crawly things; blessedly I saw no snakes slither through bushes where I was working. Some people use outdoor activities as form of prayer. I just revelled in the silence, interupted only by the warnings signals of the mockingbirds who were concerned about my pro...

Crazy Walmart Lady

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"You got to know ... when t o walk away and know when to run." Kenny Rogers, The Gambler I discovered today, that this bit of Kenny Roger's wisdom is something I'm seriously lacking. While on a very simple visit to Walmart, the sole purpose of which was to make 4, count them f-o-u-r returns, I should have turned around shortly after I walked in the front door. I didn't and here's what happened. ..... The guy, Pearson, is responsible for not only saying hello but also making sure all returns get a label so that the person making the return does not get accused of stealing it at the Customer Service desk. Pearson's label making machine was broken, which was obvious the very first time he tried to print a label on return item number one. And it was still broken on times 3, 4, and 5. As people with empty baskets passed me by, Pearson kept trying. I began to fume. It is no joke that my normally short fuse is at an all time low point. I asked if I could just wal...

Two by Two

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NaBloPoMo disclaimer: This post has nothing to do with food other than the promised recipes at the end. I've included two to make up for missing yesterday. "Falling in love with someone isn't always going to be easy ... Anger ... tears ... laughter.. It's when you want to be together despite it all. That's when you truly love another. I've sure of it."* After reading some of our earliest correspondence for my previous post, I spent time today thinking about my Sweetie and me. In doing so I had an "epi-phanny" of sorts. It occurred to me that even though we've only been together for 4 years, I have a vision of us as one of those couples you see in the Sunday newspaper who have been married for 50 or 60 years. The vision, I know, is a little skewed. My sweetie and I are relative youngsters when it comes to the relationship longevity. Babes, you might say, in the proverbial relationship woods. Those newspaper couples have been tested by time; t...

Procrastination!

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"Don't do today what you can put off til tomorrow." Words of wisdom from Merry ME* I didn't even make it a week. The NaBloPoMo challenge has now officially been added to the things in my life that need tweaking. It's not that they don't get done; they just don't get done on time or when they do get done it's kind of half-assed. Well, that's not exactly true, yesterday's post didn't get done at all. I could make the case that my father and Sweetie come first. (Sadly, most often in that order). I was busy getting soundly trounced in a game of rummy by my Dad who had obviously been touched by the card fairy. He couldn't do anything wrong, and I couldn't do anything right; he got Aces, I got stuck with cards costing 10 points in my had. It made for a very lopsided score and most likely took my mind of anything that had to do with food, especially writing about it. After that, my Sweetie and I got totally involved in a Dateline story ab...

Harder than I thought

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"Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity." Voltaire Writing about food has proven to be more difficult to write about every day than I originally expected. Maybe it's because I've been depressed and writing about anything every day would prove problematic. But it could be that food is the proverbial thorn of my flesh. I have a love/hate relationship with food. While I don't consider myself a glutton and certainly am not by any standards a gourmant, but I do like to eat. Over the years, my once lithe, limber body has slowed down and spread out. Not an uncommon side effect of menopause, yet, truth be told, I can't blame all the spreading on hormonal sluggishness. Most of it has to do with eating too much and exercising too little. Food is both a comfort to me and a challenge. The comfort comes from the eating, but the trial is in the preparing. How can you have one without the other? Who ...

Recipe Only

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Sorry, I can't think of anything to say about food today. But here's a recipe for Sugar cookies, a Christmas baking staple. Merry ME July 6: Ethel's Sugar Cookies ¾ cup shortening (part butter or margarine) 1 cup sugar 2 eggs ½ tsp lemon flavoring or 1 tsp. vanilla 2 ½ cups all purpose flour 1 tsp baking powder 1 tsp. salt Preheat oven to 400 degrees (mod. Hot).Mix shortening, sugar, eggs and flavoring thoroughly. Sift flour, baking powder and salt together; blend in. Chill at least 1 hr. Roll dough to 1/8 inch thick on lightly floured board. Cut with 3 inch cookie cutter. Place on un-greased baking sheet. Bake 6-8 minutes or until cookies are a delicate golden color. When cool, decorate with frosting, sprinkles and nonpareils. Makes about 4 dozen cookies. Notes: From the looks of this page in the cookbook, this is the recipe I use most often. I have tried others, but usually come back to this one. I think the lemon flavoring is what makes it different. Be sure to chill wel...

Food Facts in the News

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" When one has tasted watermelon he knows what the angels eat." Mark Twain Gone are the days when personal hygiene and, ahem, dysfunction were discussed only in the privacy of the doctor's office. You know that cold, sterile environment with nothing to look at while you sit on a paper-lined steel table waiting for an exam of parts "down there" that can't even be named out loud. No, today, just about everything that was once private and personal is fair game for pharmaceutical marketers. Erectile dysfunction, vaginitis, the spread of genital herpes, constipation and pooting in public are all freely discussed by celebrities and ordinary people. I don't know about you, but I prefer not hearing about certain symptoms that the ads promise to alleviate. Any discussion of odor and itching is way more information than I need. Nor do I care to hear about all the possible side effects. In fact I find it hard to believe that the list of scary possible concerns coul...

Lizard Stew ... Not

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I can't think of much to say about food today except that I'm glad I'm not a lizard. My sweetie and I were in the pool this afternoon, cooling off after pulling about a kazillion weeds and prickly vines. We were minding our own business, not bothering the reptiles sunning themselves on the expertly trimmed azaleas. All of a sudden, a lizard literally zoomed out of the brush skittering across the cool deck. If there was such a thing as lizard Olympics, I'm pretty sure this speed demon would lead the pack. Then we noticed another smaller lizard clinging to the tip top of a water sprinkler pole with all four of his little tiny webbed feet. Clearly, something had spooked the critters. We had to look close but there it was. A snake. A black snake. A black snake who was silently slithering up on his anticipated lizard dinner. It was like having our own personal animal planet program. We watched as the snake closed in on his prey. I held my breath hoping the lizard wouldn'...

Why My Stomach Hurts This Morning

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"A good resolution is like an old horse, which is often saddled but rarely ridden.” Mexican Proverb I found AntiJen's first Food post for NaBloPoMo much more positive than mine. She attacked the challenge with gusto. But then for a girl who buys cat food 200 cans at a time, I'd say gusto is her middle name! Yesterday I had a bit of a vacation. My sister took over all the household duties from making lunch (and dinner) to discussing Dad's constipation. My sweetie and I took off for St. Augustine with one goal in mind. Well, two actually. The first was to enjoy some time together and the second was to purchase some tea bag holders that I saw months ago and have been unable able to forget. For some reason found I am unable to live without them. [I want to have a tea party and how can I do such without all the table accouterments? Thus the lust for tea bag holders!] While being with my sweetie was indeed refreshing, I've got to say not much else about the trip was. St....

Christmas in July

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"I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month." Harlan Miller Even though I like to think of myself as an organized girl, I'm not much of an orderly shopper. For reasons I have yet to understand, I find there is cause to go to the grocery store almost every day. I make lists, on paper and in my mind, still there's something I've forgotten. In the same vane I've never been one of those people who could do my Christmas shopping early. While the lure of extra savings is enticing, day after Christmas shopping makes me sad. I don't do good in crowds and who wants to see the things that they stood in line for at the beginning of the season to assure they'd make someone's dream come true, sitting on a bedraggled, picked-through shelf and marked fifty percent off? Elmos with broken ticklers and Cabbage patch kids who didn't get picked sit in clearance bins like older kids in an orphanage, just waiting ...