Yummmmm

I decided to take something non-traditional to our feast
I started chopping onions....the recipe calls for 5 tablespoons, but I didn't measure...

A can of chopped chilies, drained

The juice of one small lime.  Well...this said 3 tablespoons but how do you get exactly that, and what do you do with any left over?  Would you really cut a second lime if you were a little short?   I suppose I could handle lime juice the same way I do garlic...again...why measure?

Do you know what I am making?


The recipe calls for a clove of garlic minced.
I don't mince words.  I don't mince garlic.
So.  A teaspoon of garlic from a jar in the fridge


In a big bowl
Two avocados cut small, then mashed.

Mix all the stuff above in

Add freshly ground pepper, about 1/2 teaspoon, but really to taste
And then sea salt...I like a good amount...but you can use less if you have salty chips.

This is some awesome Guacamole...great with that pre dinner sitting around with a drink in your hand, at Fourth of July parties, birthday celebrations and, yes, Thanksgiving.  

Enjoy!

Giving thanks

As a woman who works, who has kids, who has a husband of a certain age, I want to express my gratitude for life's conveniences.
I have to say I am glad I don't have to get up and stoke a stove to warm the house before I cook breakfast on the top of it.  For that matter, I don't have to go out and snatch the eggs out from under a chicken either.  The guy who invented the refrigerator is second only to the guy who invented frozen food items, in my humble opinion.
Gas stoves, central heat, air conditioning.  Dishwashers!
Can you imagine having to bake bread every few days?  Your grandmother probably did.  
And laundry?  Ever see one of those old wringer machines?  Looks like a torture device to me.  Then hangin it up, and taking it down....and everything back then needed ironed.  I bet it was a woman who invented the wrinkle free fabrics....
People talk about how life was simpler back in the day, but I have to say, those people had wives to do their housework, and they had the nerve to say they didn't work.  Today men recognize that keeping a house is work too, but too often when both spouses work they view household chores as something they do to "help their wife."   As if it is her house to clean, her dinner to cook or her kid who needs bathed.   And don't get me started on the man who says he has to babysit his own kid when his wife is busy!
It's called parenting, and it's your kid too.
Here's to the stay at home wives and mothers, now and then.  Their work is under appreciated and never done.  Take time this week to thank your mom, or someone like her, for all they do.

Next Blog...

I discovered the Next Blog link today and I am in love.   I feel like a voyeur peeking into the windows of other people's lives.

Did you know there are 9 year olds with blogs?  And I saw one written for a 9 month old with a beautiful smile.  It was mostly pictures anyway.  I need more pictures on my blog.

There is a lady out west talking about her ordinary days.  Swiss Steak, getting her hair done, and Bob making a salad.  I read a bunch of her entries and felt like I was a neighbor.  I left her a comment because she said she might make cookies and I wanted to know what kind.... You know, she should put the recipe.

I saw poetry about beautiful girls, and pictures of beaches and sunsets.  I saws picture of a little boy, about 1 year old covered in chocolate, Halloween costumes for a family of three kids, and an entire day of  pictures from a group of women's outing to town, in an African village.  The colors were amazing, such good pictures.   I wished I was there because they were having fun!

Anyway, after spying on all these people and more, I wonder who the anonymous visitors to my little page have been.  I so enjoyed seeing what everyone else has blogged about, I hope you like my scribbles.  Please feel free to comment.

Stupidest Toy Ever? (...just in time for your Christmas Shopping!)

This is a Bob-A-Loop.

Evidently they were a thing in the past, But I never saw one until this one arrived at my house in a box of odds and ends from an auction.  I want to nominate it, here and now, for the honorary title of Stupidest Toy Ever.

So, what you have here basically is a heavy little solid wood barrel, with a cord attaching it to a pointy stick.   There is a little hole in the barrel, on the side opposite the cord.

Now, the plan is that you grasp the pointy stick in your hot little kid hand, and you swing that barrel up and catch it on the point.   Really.  I looked it up on google.  There were videos of old ads touting it as a great activity for the whole family, and it showed Bob-a-Loops being caught on their pointy sticks by kids, moms, Dads - well, even grandma could do it.

But I'm saying there is a reason I never saw one until now.

What I envision is this.   Imagine your suburban home, a couple kids, a dog,   Junior gets the Bob-A-Loop out of his stocking and turns it over in his hands.  What is this for?  Susie toddles over to see this shiny red item.  Junior starts swinging the barrel and hits the dog as he runs past.  The dog runs away and cringes in a corner, physically and psychologically wounded after being slapped by a swinging chunk of wood,  Junior drops the toy on the floor and goes to comfort Fido.  Aww poor boy, I'm sorry.....

Little Susie picks up the Bob-A-Loop handle and the weight of the barrel unbalances her little toddler steps, and she sits down hard on her diaper and scratches her cheek with the pointy end....  All this within a minute of taking it out of the stocking!

Seriously, this toy is amazing in it's awkward weirdness.  What were the designers thinking when they put it together?  That this heavy lump of wood would provide incentive to learn the trick faster?  Because each time you miss the pointy stick on a swing, the Bob-a-Loop barrel is going to rap your knuckles just like the Nuns used to do to get you to stop doing something.

Negative reinforcement.

Anyway, this is my nomination.  I want to know if someone can top it.

I turned the font pink on my first post, and I don't have any idea how I did it.

Computers are supposed to simplify our lives.  Why is it every time I get involved with one the simple things become complicated?   I am dying to publish this one right now, so I can see if it stays pink!  This may be a very short entry!

I have spent hours yesterday and today putting this together, and it is such a little tentative thing, so far.  I had envisioned lots of interesting essays and recipes, pictures and poetry, and my first start is unreadably pink at the moment.  The time I spent on trying to put it back could have brought you a pumpkin tart recipe, or some great cat nap photos...

And it's still pink.

Pink is nice, really.   It's soft and feminine.  It is kinder to the eyes than orange.  It's just....unreadable.  :(

Last winter....

Virginia.

It's the south.  But not the deep south.  The drawl is less slow, the belles are less spoiled and even the rednecks are more laid back than when you drive further down I95.  And we like it better than the north as well...  There is a famous, and as far as I know, anonymous quote that goes "To be a Virginian, either by Birth, Marriage, Adoption, or even on one's Mother's side, is an Introduction to any State in the Union, a Passport to any Foreign Country, and a Benediction from Above."

It's home for me.  I can think of lots of other places I want to visit, but no where else I want to come home to at the end of my travels.

Winter is coming to Virginia.  As I type that I can hear my brother laughing at me all the way from Wyoming.  But here in Virginia, we are not used to the cold.  Our blood is warm.  Our houses are warm, and we don't do well with the onslaught of cold that starts this time of year.
One way you can tell you're in the south is to turn on the news before a snow storm.  They report the snow's approach as if it were an invading army.  Flurries have been spotted in the foothills and coming closer to town.  Update at 5.

And for God's sake, don't go near the grocery store when snow is forecast.  It never stays on the ground more than a day or two but people buy as if they will be snowed in for a month.  The stores actually run out of bread, milk and toilet paper.

I, for one, am done with winter already, and it hasn't officially started yet.

Still....There are a few good things about winter in the south.   Homemade Soup.  Cocoa.  Tights and boots.  Snow days.   And the holidays are coming, good family gatherings... I guess those things happen even in the north, but the snow melts faster here so we can get to them.

And spring is just around the corner.