Tater salad rerun

Spent Sunday at work, it was kind of slow due to Labor Day weekend. I decided to make potato salad and stopped at McKay's to pick up some ingredients on the way home from work.

8 to 10 small to medium Yukon gold potatoes.
6 eggs
1/2 Sweet white onion.
6 to 8 small midget dill pickles
1 can black olives
dash red pepper flakes
dash Paprika
salt and pepper to taste
sprinkle celery seeds
1 tbsp chopped garlic
3 hefty squirts yellow mustard
1 cup of mayonnaise.

Bring large pot of water to boil,drop in potatoes for ten minutes.
Add eggs to boiling water at 10 minutes, continue to simmer for another 10 minutes.
Turn off heat, remove pot from heat and let cool another ten minutes.
Drain and let potatoes and eggs cool.
When cool, peel potatoes and eggs. Cube potatoes and coarse chop the eggs.
Dice the onion, half the olives, add the remainder of ingredients and mix until coated. Refrigerate; the taste will blend nicely by tomorrow. If you eat it now all you will get is potato, mustard and mayonnaise taste.

If there is a hurricane headed your way, pack up and git!

Gas prices and an all day MEETING

Price of gas is dropping just in time for Labor Day weekend. I shall track the upward direction once the holiday is over.



This is a picture of two of the three guys running the Strategic Planning and Development meeting today. I got drafted as my boss lady is out on medical leave. So I got to sit there from 9:30 to 3:30 and listen to some fairly comprehensive marketing and finance speeches. There was a lot of interacting and that exercise was fairly decent. I was aghast at the agenda but it was a nice surprise, got free lunch too. The meeting was at the Oregon Credit Union building in a very posh board room. We should have more meetings. There is adequate parking there. In a nutshell, it looks like we may have an 18 million dollar, 38,000 square foot facility built within the next four years to replace the current 38 year old hospital.

The hope is that we will add new services and the most important one is to recruit more physicians.

Price of Gas and Wildlife at work

This was the price of gas the other foggy morning so I thought I had better take a picture before the price went the wrong direction.




I have been seeing deer nibble on the tender vegetation and today was a good opportunity to snap a picture out the back door of the hospital. It is said that deer like blackberry bushes, however, we have too many dogs in the neighborhood to attract deer to our delicious, abundant black berry bushes....sigh....must go pick more blackberries.....

Silver Dagger

I am such a musical ignoramus. I have been listening to Got Radio on the net in particular Celtic music. Every once in a while I would hear this song about a silver dagger. The singer is asking her lover not to sing love songs because her mother is sleeping by her side with a silver dagger in her hand.

Hmmm. So I googled Silver Dagger Lyrics and got a nice link to Wikipedia. Jeez Silver Dagger has been around a hundred years or so. Joan Baez sang her version and here it is. You will have to make up your own tune in your head. I don't want to violate copyright laws. Go ahead be creative, plaintiff, musical and if at all possible acapella harmony wouldn't go astray.

Joan Baez version of Silver Dagger:

Don' sing love songs; you'll wake my mother

She's sleepig here, right by my side

And in her hand, a silver dagger

She says that I can't be your bride.

All men are false, says my mother
They'll tell wicked lovin' lies
The very next evening, they'll court another
Leave you alone to pine and sign.

My Daddy is a handsome devil

He's got a chain five miles long

And on every link a heart does dangle

Of another maid he's loved and wronged.

Go court another tender maiden
and hope that she will be your wife
For I've been warned and I've decided
to sleep alone all of my life.

WARNING! BOOK REPORT!

I just completed book 2 in what I hope is a series of 13 total by the author, Kathryne Kennedy.

Her first book "Enchanting The Lady" is set in Regency England. The ruling class possess very strong magic. In fact the only way anyone can inherit property is to prove their magic in the Court of Mages. Felicity has a problem, she has no magic and she is the dependent of very powerful magical relatives. Nope,not one itsy bitsy bit of power. However, it seems that her power is being held in check by one of the relics of Merlin. It is up to the good guy to free her from this relic, find and destroy the relic before the bad guys get to it first. There is another layer in society that of the were people. People who are were hold rank no higher than Barons,however magic does not effect them. There is tension between the ruling high society and the lowly were people society...and the good guy is one of the were people.

The second book, "Double Enchantment" is about Jasmina who has been designated by her parents as the dutiful daughter who will take care of her parents in their old age. Her mother has a very bad habit of borrowing things from friends and forgetting to return them. Jasmina has to dress in chimney sweep clothing to sneak the pieces back to whom ever her mother has stolen them from. One evening she is returning a particularly hideous piece and she needs to make a twin spell and have her twin occupy her bed while she is out. Unfortunately the piece she is returning is one of Merlin's Relics and her twin spell is augmented by the relic and makes the twin real. Jaz takes off and does scandalous things that Jasmina would not think of doing. Jaz meets the good guy who promptly marries her. He is a were animal,he turns into a black stallion. Jaz disappears. It quickly becomes apparent that Jasmina must find Jaz and reverse the spell. Throw in a couple of pesky garden gnomes who love chaos and you have a very good read.

Fruit cocktail cake and a little history thereof

My recipe for Fruit Cocktail cake is about 40 years old. I got this when I worked for Fairchild Semiconductor,which was located near San Rafael, California in an industrial park just off Hwy 101. It was a poly cultural work force. Many of the black ladies drove over to Marin county from Contra Costa county. The oriental ladies were married to men who were stationed at the air force base just north of there not too far from Petaluma. There were potlucks and this recipe stems from one of those happy gatherings.

FRUIT COCKTAIL CAKE

1 and 1/2 cups sugar
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
pinch salt
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup nuts
1 can fruit cocktail and juice

Mix all ingredients well, it will be very moist. Sprinkle 1/4 cup brown sugar on top of mixture prior to putting in the oven to bake.

Bake in 350 degree oven for 30 minutes, if the middle still wiggles, close door to oven, turn oven off and let cake continue to cook until done. (I had to guess at this because there was no temperature or time on my little file card.)

When the cake has cooled prepare a sauce for topping the cake.

In a sauce pan, combine and melt 1/2 cup margarine or butter, I prefer butter, 1/2 cup milk, 3/4 cup sugar. Bring to boil and boil for two minutes. Pour over top of cake. I added a handful of shredded coconut at the last minute.

This tastes like one of those stick toffee puddings that you hear about. Delicious.

awRIGHT awREDDY

This is my newly purchased (second time, I lost the first one) glass finger nail file. I have officially given up on the Amazon.com/Knife Store people actually sending me an unbroken file. I shall muster the strength to attend to returning the most recent broken product and totter off to the post office to mail it back and demand a return of my funds.

I got tired of waiting for the third promised product to arrive and after working Google pretty hard, found www.zamborg.com and at that site typed in Zinger. I knew the darn thing was on the net SOMEwhere and now I can once more attend to nail filing with a simple touch up.

I actually scheduled a manicure (No I don't want polish, I just CHEW it off!) to get the cuticles under control and the nails approximately the same length and shape. Also got a very nice hand massage, that and the local gossip was worth the price of the ticket. And the really weird thing? The manicurist had never heard of glass finger nail files.....