1. B'rer Paul and his wonderful wife are lots better than they were a week ago. Paul's home (had angina attack, not heart attack), and Gert (age 93) has been bowling again! She needs her sports!!
2. Friend Jesse fell and broke her leg in two places--YOWCH! Home tmw, and I've got a batch
of that celery soup with bacon & croutons ready to take over.
3. Good news on soup front: all the stores are busting out with celery & leeks! and TJs has a great little package of applewood smoked bacon ends and pieces for just $2.99. I know Zingerman's Nueske's bacon is on sale for $6 off per pound (rounding out to $11/pound). But this stuff from TJs tastes very similar, and there's no shipping charge (unless you count the bus fare for the cook). Chop chop chop....I do love making this soup!! I just hope everyone stays well for a while so I can eat it all myself!! Celery is GOOD for you.
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Saturday, February 21, 2015
winter images
1. Sparrowhawk in my daughter's yard in Scotland
2. Old friends all bundled up on the way home after dinner.
2. Old friends all bundled up on the way home after dinner.
ccf Friday, February 20, 2015
What's Lent?
1. It was bound to happen. We were talking tonight at supper about giving up FaceBook for Lent. My friend asked, "What's Lent?" Um. Well....
2. OMG...I have lived though 78 Lents, and it's easier to explain Groundhog's Day. I said I didn't know exactly, but I'd look it up. Somebody suggested it was a commemoration of the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness before he began preaching. Nah, I don't think so--not entirely. 40 has always been a significant spiritual number. Moses spent 40 days in the Wilderness--something like that. And it rained 40 days and 40 nights before the great flood. Lent lasts from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. That's 46 days, but Sundays don't count.
3. Lent is a Teutonic word meaning springtime. Simple enough. It's a season in the church calendar during which people prepare for Easter by fasting and abstaining and doing good works.
4. When I was at St. Ben's, I heard a great apocryphal story about Lent and the Lenten fast. It seems there was a monk, who decided to test his willpower during Lent by hanging a sausage over his desk. He lasted until Good Friday, when his hunger drove him to eat the sausage, spoiling his challenge and breaking the firm church rule against eating meat on Lenten Fridays--Good Friday at that.
5. Doesn't pay to try to be holier than the Church.
2. OMG...I have lived though 78 Lents, and it's easier to explain Groundhog's Day. I said I didn't know exactly, but I'd look it up. Somebody suggested it was a commemoration of the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness before he began preaching. Nah, I don't think so--not entirely. 40 has always been a significant spiritual number. Moses spent 40 days in the Wilderness--something like that. And it rained 40 days and 40 nights before the great flood. Lent lasts from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. That's 46 days, but Sundays don't count.
3. Lent is a Teutonic word meaning springtime. Simple enough. It's a season in the church calendar during which people prepare for Easter by fasting and abstaining and doing good works.
4. When I was at St. Ben's, I heard a great apocryphal story about Lent and the Lenten fast. It seems there was a monk, who decided to test his willpower during Lent by hanging a sausage over his desk. He lasted until Good Friday, when his hunger drove him to eat the sausage, spoiling his challenge and breaking the firm church rule against eating meat on Lenten Fridays--Good Friday at that.
5. Doesn't pay to try to be holier than the Church.
First Friday in Lent.....
1. In my childhood, the nuns taught us the practice of observing the First Fridays to gain indulgences for our many sins and get into heaven pronto. So don't ask how that practice went....I just know that today is the first friday in lent, so it must be good for something by way of an indulgence.
2. I've been thinking a lot of my parents these days. Of how my Dad always went the extra mile during Lent. He not only followed the traditional fasting from food, but he also gave up drinking and smoking. No pre-dinner highballs. That's a lot of relaxation to bypass in the North Dakota winter. (And my brothers said it insured that the rest of us had something to offer up
during Lent, too.)
3. But my mom was a wonderful cook, and she had first rate ingredients to choose from: home grown vegetables from our victory garden, walleyed pike my dad caught through the ice on the lake, home-canned pheasant, home-made bread. My surviving brother, Paul, still raves about her pheasant in gravy over homemade biscuits. (Me, too. Food of the gods!) Mom never smoked, and she relaxed by doing tole painting--I still have a cutting board she decorated with a peasant girl.
4. Of the two of them, Mom was the least rigorous in her piety. Dad always led the rosary when they prayed it together, but she was very kind and tolerant of my dad's Irish temper. We kids set him off more than she ever did.
5. It's still wintry here, though the temp has never dipped below 0F yet. Hardly the "Arctic Blast" Fox weather trumpets. It's just the beginning of Lent, after all, and we know how that ends....in Easter and springtime!!
2. I've been thinking a lot of my parents these days. Of how my Dad always went the extra mile during Lent. He not only followed the traditional fasting from food, but he also gave up drinking and smoking. No pre-dinner highballs. That's a lot of relaxation to bypass in the North Dakota winter. (And my brothers said it insured that the rest of us had something to offer up
during Lent, too.)
3. But my mom was a wonderful cook, and she had first rate ingredients to choose from: home grown vegetables from our victory garden, walleyed pike my dad caught through the ice on the lake, home-canned pheasant, home-made bread. My surviving brother, Paul, still raves about her pheasant in gravy over homemade biscuits. (Me, too. Food of the gods!) Mom never smoked, and she relaxed by doing tole painting--I still have a cutting board she decorated with a peasant girl.
4. Of the two of them, Mom was the least rigorous in her piety. Dad always led the rosary when they prayed it together, but she was very kind and tolerant of my dad's Irish temper. We kids set him off more than she ever did.
5. It's still wintry here, though the temp has never dipped below 0F yet. Hardly the "Arctic Blast" Fox weather trumpets. It's just the beginning of Lent, after all, and we know how that ends....in Easter and springtime!!
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Giving Up FaceBook for Lent
1. One of my grandnieces was inspired to give up FB for Lent, and then one of my kids said that she's abstained from FB for a good part of the year for 3 years now. I found that inspiring! So, I'm gonna do it, too!! 46 days off!
2. I haven't gotten the hang of FaceBookese, anyway. All kids are "cute," "adorable," "precious," "brilliant," etc., but what do you say when all of those adjectives have been taken in any one post on any one kid? Within the past week, etc.
3. Lots of people appear to be rooting in their old photo albums to find more
comely photos of themselves in the past to decorate their FB pages. OK...we all looked YOUNGER at one time, and for some of us, that means we looked skinnier and less wrinkly. I don't think skinnier or less wrinkly is necessarily a better way to look than we do now. (Ms. Wrinkle City talking here....)
4. Seems like we just get so we can relate to our children, who have had their loathsome moments, and bingo! there's grandchildren--all cute, adorable, & brilliant--even more appealing than the children, who used to be skinnier and less wrinkly. If you live long enough, though, the grandchildren will manifest a few bumps and scrapes, too. Then, if you're lucky, there's great-grandchildren. The g-g-cs are swell. Brand new!! What's not to like??
5. Well, Happy Lent, all. You won't have me cluttering Face Book with my sour mug til after Easter. Enjoy!!
2. I haven't gotten the hang of FaceBookese, anyway. All kids are "cute," "adorable," "precious," "brilliant," etc., but what do you say when all of those adjectives have been taken in any one post on any one kid? Within the past week, etc.
3. Lots of people appear to be rooting in their old photo albums to find more
comely photos of themselves in the past to decorate their FB pages. OK...we all looked YOUNGER at one time, and for some of us, that means we looked skinnier and less wrinkly. I don't think skinnier or less wrinkly is necessarily a better way to look than we do now. (Ms. Wrinkle City talking here....)
4. Seems like we just get so we can relate to our children, who have had their loathsome moments, and bingo! there's grandchildren--all cute, adorable, & brilliant--even more appealing than the children, who used to be skinnier and less wrinkly. If you live long enough, though, the grandchildren will manifest a few bumps and scrapes, too. Then, if you're lucky, there's great-grandchildren. The g-g-cs are swell. Brand new!! What's not to like??
5. Well, Happy Lent, all. You won't have me cluttering Face Book with my sour mug til after Easter. Enjoy!!
Monday, February 16, 2015
Happy Preznets' Day!
1. So George Washington did not graduate from/go to college! This does not qualify all the other non-collegian putative presidential candidates for running this country. Just because you didn't go to college, doesn't mean you're smarter than a box of rocks.
2. Please also tell me how George W. Bush (famous preznet) got into & out of Yale and into the Harvard MBA program without huge infusions of Papa Bush's/Grandpapa Bush's dough???
3. Remember the story of the shepherd boy who so often cried "WOLF!" when there was no wolf that nobody believed him when there actually was a wolf?? We have this problem here in D.C. among the weather predicting alerters for "SNOW!" and "BAD WEATHER!" Read this a.m. that the Mayor Herself has "released funds" (some of her cash?) for SNOW REMOVAL. If it falls. Which it hasn't yet.
4. I applaud her optimism that the snow removal team/task force will actually remove much snow from major arteries (never mind your street). Everything will be closed, anyway, starting with all the gummint offices, schools, and the liberry. My advice: Stay home and watch TV. You can catch last night's Downton Abbey online if the children are using the TV.
5. Hot toddy is really just tea with booze and lemon juice. Any tea/booze will do. Lime juice is not verra good in place of lemon, however. Here's
to warming drinks for when the marshmallows run out.
2. Please also tell me how George W. Bush (famous preznet) got into & out of Yale and into the Harvard MBA program without huge infusions of Papa Bush's/Grandpapa Bush's dough???
3. Remember the story of the shepherd boy who so often cried "WOLF!" when there was no wolf that nobody believed him when there actually was a wolf?? We have this problem here in D.C. among the weather predicting alerters for "SNOW!" and "BAD WEATHER!" Read this a.m. that the Mayor Herself has "released funds" (some of her cash?) for SNOW REMOVAL. If it falls. Which it hasn't yet.
4. I applaud her optimism that the snow removal team/task force will actually remove much snow from major arteries (never mind your street). Everything will be closed, anyway, starting with all the gummint offices, schools, and the liberry. My advice: Stay home and watch TV. You can catch last night's Downton Abbey online if the children are using the TV.
5. Hot toddy is really just tea with booze and lemon juice. Any tea/booze will do. Lime juice is not verra good in place of lemon, however. Here's
to warming drinks for when the marshmallows run out.
Friday, February 13, 2015
Happy Valentine's Day
1. Coming up from the cold/flu fog, thanks to lots of rest and a big order of curry lakhsa that fed & warmed me over two days. tonight? I'll order in some pizza, maybe.
2. The outside temperature is not so low on the thermometer--16F--and the sun is shining bright, but it feels like 2F cuz of the wind. Having grown up in Fargo, my mind says this really isn't cold, but my body disagrees.
3. Tomorrow is St. Valentine's Day. Not enough time to mail anything. So...Happy Valentine's Day to all who read this!
4. Where has Google.com gone? I used to be able to look things up, like "Who was St. Valentine?" on Google.com, but now I get Amazon.com. Don't want to buy a book about St. V, just find out about him. Was he a Roman soldier, a martyr (probably)? And why did the Church dump him from the calendar??
5. So the Pope now says not having children is selfish! Whatever happened to "Who am I to judge?"
2. The outside temperature is not so low on the thermometer--16F--and the sun is shining bright, but it feels like 2F cuz of the wind. Having grown up in Fargo, my mind says this really isn't cold, but my body disagrees.
3. Tomorrow is St. Valentine's Day. Not enough time to mail anything. So...Happy Valentine's Day to all who read this!
4. Where has Google.com gone? I used to be able to look things up, like "Who was St. Valentine?" on Google.com, but now I get Amazon.com. Don't want to buy a book about St. V, just find out about him. Was he a Roman soldier, a martyr (probably)? And why did the Church dump him from the calendar??
5. So the Pope now says not having children is selfish! Whatever happened to "Who am I to judge?"
Sunday, February 1, 2015
What Is Super Bowl Sunday??
1. Christmas without the decorations, gifts, and cards.
2. Easter without the bonnets & jelly beans.
3. Thanksgiving without the tuekey, cranberry jelly, and pumpkin pie.
4. Downton Abbey on tape.
5. Rude Hippo craft beer!!
2. Easter without the bonnets & jelly beans.
3. Thanksgiving without the tuekey, cranberry jelly, and pumpkin pie.
4. Downton Abbey on tape.
5. Rude Hippo craft beer!!
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