French toast croissant

Ahhh, Saturday morning, a lazy day to drag out the on sale frozen croissant and a bag of out dated frozen strawberries for Croissant Pan Purdue with Strawberry compote.  Mmmmmmm.

It wasn't exactly a Chopped episode but the croissant slices nicely when frozen and since they have a great whacking amount of butter in them they brown nicely in a hot pan.  Um, the extra butter on top is purely for over kill.

I dumped the icky strawberries in a sauce pan, added three packets of Splenda and let it boil merrily away.

It was delicious!

The rest of the croissanst will feature as part of tuna salad sandwiches. I use a can of water packed albacore, one chopped apple, scant handful of chopped walnuts, half chopped onion, couple tablespoons of Mayo, couple squirts creamy horseradish and spread it on.  Not bad at all.  Of course Tuna can be substituted or if you wish vegan, leave it out and add another crunchy veg.

Bon Appetite!
 

The passing of an era and other food memories

I, personally, have not been overly affected by the closing of Hostess due to finance/labor/etc troubles.  I always found the Twinkies to be a bit bland and such commercial goodies were never much available at our house as dinner consisted of meat, potatoes and dessert.  No Twinkies.

However, husband saw the news and immediately went to the store and purchased 10 blackberry pies (hand size?) and he got me some chocolate sumpin' sumpin'.  He would eat the blackberry pies as a youth for a Sabbath treat.  Now his mother would have prepared the traditional blackberry cobbler but there was just something about this forbidden snack that appealed to his blackberry starved soul.   He mused that he would freeze them and savor them on a yearly basis.  According to the news, Hostess may have been sold off to the money brokers of Wall Street but some of the brands may mysteriously reappear on the market in the future.  We plan to use a box of the Hostess cupcakes as a gag gift at the auction at the next Christmas party and see if there is a lot of turn over before it is finally claimed. 

Since I am remembering other food memories, it was not that unusual for Dad to announce to all to get in the car, we're going for a drive.  This usually involved getting a gallon of root beer in a jug, a dozen maple bars and a couple cans of Vienna sausage.  Thus stocked, we would drive the bench, the valley and Mom and Dad would argue about who lived where and then that school was closed and what Power line Dad may have worked on for the Power company.  Pure boredom for us ravenous omnivores sitting the back seats (station wagon, lots of kids).  Occasionally if the finances were riding more generously Dad would pick up an oven roasted chicken and we might even have been let out of the car at a park to consume the food and being thorough little omnivores even cracked and chewed the well baked chicken bones. 

As a final aside, to this day I do not particularly care for root beer, maples bars or Vienna sausage.  ......

Ooh shiny new gutters

The gutters guys came today to install new gutters front,back and all around the front "porch".  Theoretically this will keep the rain out of the basement unless we have a tsunami, then all bets are off.
 

Chrismas Cactus

Just started blooming this week, very pretty.  It is more of a succulent and looks cactus-like with those spiky things but they were soft, not thorns.  Grandma Horn had one like this.

She kept a garden and I loved her sun hat, I found one almost like it, huge round brim, small cap, strings to tie beneath ones chin.

There was a gooseberry bush that grew on top of the root cellar and if I begged her for a gooseberry pie, she would let me go pick enough berries to make a pie. She would then shudder when ever I took a bite.  She apparently did not like gooseberry.  She also indulged me a young beggar to eat way more cherry pie than I should have with disastrous gastrointestinal results. Haven't liked cherry pie since. Ah me.....

Mockingbird Lane Review..LOVED the show.

REVIEW 'JACKED FROM BIG SHINY ROBOT BLOG:

I’ll be completely honest, when I first heard about a Munsters reboot, I was pretty dubious, especially since they were going to take the series in a much darker direction. Then I learned that Eddie Izzard was not only cast as Grandpa Munster, but he was completely behind and in support of the project, and that definitely piqued my interest — which waned again upon learning that Jerry O’Connell was to play the lead of Herman Munster. Finally, it was announced that NBC decided not to option the show and were only going to air the pilot as a special in front of a Halloween episode of Grimm. Needless to say, I approached the airing of Mockingbird Lane with a lot of apprehension, not only because I was on the fence as to whether it was going to be good or not, but mainly because if it WAS good, there weren’t going to be any more episodes. Well, this emotional roller coaster finished with my latter fear being fulfilled, and I am rather sad that it is very unlikely we are going to see any more episodes of this wonderful show that really captured the comedic elements of the original, all the while updating it for a modern audience.

As Mockingbird Lane begins, we see a Boy Scout type group of young boys camping in the woods, when they get attacked by a werewolf who we soon learn is young Eddie Munster (Mason Cook) who wakes up in the bushes not knowing what has happened. Days later, in a hope to hide Eddie from the reality of what he is becoming, Marilyn Munster (Charity Wakefield) buys a decrepit house on 1313 Mockingbird Lane (the home of the hobo serial killer, whose victims are still buried inside the walls of the house). As the family settles in, it becomes apparent that Herman and Lily Munster (Jerry O’Connell and Portia de Rossi) are at odds with Grandpa Munster (Eddie Izzard) regarding how they should inform Eddie about the changes he is going through, with Grandpa insisting on telling him the truth, and Herman and Lily wanting to keep him in the dark in order to retain his innocence for a little bit longer. Not to mention that Herman’s (very much the Frankenstein’s monster as in the original) heart is starting to give out, and Grandpa’s idea to fix this problem involves Eddie’s new scout master, who is not only a match for Herman, but also a future tasty morsel for himself as he has decided to start ‘drinking again’. The episode ends with Eddie coming to terms with being a werewolf, being given a pet dragon to watch over him, and a sense of disappointment knowing that we probably won’t see any more of what could have been a really fun and excellent series.
Mockingbird Lane is VERY much the Eddie Izzard show, as he is given the best lines, and definitely comes across as the main character. Anyone who is a fan of his stand up should be familiar with his sarcastic and pitch perfect timing in delivering his one liners, and he delivers here in spades. The rest of the characters are fun and are presented well, and, thankfully, Jerry O’Connell has a muted presence and, ironically, seems very human, in his role.
The writing is sharp and witty with plenty of quotable sound bytes you’ll find yourself repeating days later, the special effects, while nothing spectacular, are pretty good for a basic TV series, and Bryan Singer does a fine job of directing. In short, this show is really fun, interesting and a hell of a lot better than a lot of the crap the networks have spewed out so far this season, so it’s really frustrating that this pilot might be all we ever get to see, as the writers and actors should be given a chance to see where they can go with these characters and story. I have heard that there is a slight chance that the network execs might decide to give the show a second life if the ratings for the one-shot are good, but I’m not putting much faith in that.
Instead, I will very happily visit my DVR every so often to watch what could be a great series, and hope that NBC sells off the rights to SyFy or FX and we get the continuation of the misadventures of what should be America’s new favorite creepy neighbors.

Very odd colorful dream, eesh.

MALL PRINCESS DREAM:

I woke from the most colorful busy dream last night.

I was walking in a largish city that looked familiar. I crossed the road at a green light and avoided traffic as much as possible.

I finally came to a mall, it was very large and again looked familiar. Inside I walked to a food court/entertainment center. I purchased my Chinese dinner (General Tsoa) and sat in a largish booth along with 8 or 9 other diners.

Suddenly there was a line of majestically dressed men wearing costumes of brilliant colors like they wear in certain Italian cities on feast days and toss flags in the air before the horse race. They blew their horns to summon other guests from the mall. Many people came to watch the spectacle.

There was a group of a dozen or so ladies dressed in fancy Medieval style, pointed hats, veils, long dresses and long hair.

I seemed to know the young lady playing the part of the Lady Princess. She had been picked out of the audience and was rehearsing her part and she waved merrily at me. She also wore Medieval dress but her necklace was a gorgeous very high choker made of ruby and diamonds and draped down over the front of her gown.

This assemblage went on for some time as we finished our dinners. Eventually the Lord Prince arrived, there was more rehearsal and then I woke up. Very colorful, dunno know what happened.

Now I am compelled to go to the Dream interpretation site and plug in several words for their meanings; Mall, Rehearsal, Royalty, eating. How very odd.

To see a member of royalty in your dream represents spiritual strength, grace, power,extravagance, as well as ruthlessness. Alternatively, royalty represents your desires of dominating and commanding others. (Oooh ruthlessness oh my,not so much the command part. Ew.)

To see a princess in your dream represents the object of your affections or desires.

To dream that you are at the mall represents your attempts in making a favorable impression on someone. You are trying to establish your identity and sense of self. ( I haven't actually been to a real mall in several years, obviously making no attempt to make a favorable impression on anyone.)

To see food in your dream represents physical and emotional nourishment and energies. (go check out some Oriental literature, take up Kung Foo?   Watch Kung Foo Panda again and weep when the old turtle turns into peach blossoms and floats away? ...oh dear so many choices.

Rehearsal – You are making sure that you know exactly what you need to do.  (well work wise I know exactly what I need to do but that requires about a million bucks, am hoping Power Ball hits. Personal wise I am striving mightily to ignore remaining bits that need fixing on the house (gutters, Trane etc) so. There you go. 

  

Plants, cooking, book storage.

The cactus have blossomed briefly this late summer. Very pretty, no discernible scent, however.

Our holly tree is loaded with berries, they are not quite fire engine red but soon they shall attract a traveling band of Robins who while wintering here will strip the tree bare in an afternoon.

I had the urge to bake some chicken, so I did on a bed of chopped onion, quartered new potatoes, sliced of squash and an orange for flavor. The bird and veggies have since been deboned and are in Ye Olde' Tupperware bowl.

OH yes went to a yard sale today. One of my co-workers is moving to Bend and she had a book shelf that fit nicely in a corner of the dining room.

Then I got a call to go to work, the lone transcriptionist is sick with the flu so I went in for a couple of hours.....I still have one very large box of books and one small box of books.  I would estimate there are 1000 books unlogged at present.