Thursday, June 09, 2022
Thursday Thirteen
Tuesday, June 07, 2022
Chocolate Lush Recipe
Chocolate Lush
This is my grandmother's recipe, which I have revised somewhat, and which I am posting here for posterity.
Ingredients
1 cup self-rising flour
3/4 cup sugar
6 tablespoons cocoa
2 tablespoons shortening
1/2 cup milk
4 teaspoons vanilla
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 3/4 cup hot water
optional: 1/2 cup walnuts or pecans
Instructions
Part 1: Add flour, sugar, and 2 tablespoons cocoa together. Combine shortening, milk, and 2 teaspoons vanilla (and nuts if desired). Add to dry ingredients. Mix until well blended. Spread into 8x8x2 ungreased pan or dish.
Part 2: Combine brown sugar, 4 tablespoons cocoa, hot water, 2 teaspoons vanilla, mix well. Pour over batter in pan.
Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 40 to 45 minutes. The watery substance on top will magically fall to the bottom of the pan, creating a pudding with cake on top.
Cut into squares and serve hot with Cool Whip or ice cream.
Sunday, June 05, 2022
Sunday Stealing
I encourage you to visit other participants in Sunday Stealing posts and leave a comment. Cheers to all us thieves who love memes, however we come by them.
Saturday, June 04, 2022
Saturday 9: Cinderella Rockefella
Friday, June 03, 2022
Promises Broken
Thursday, June 02, 2022
Thursday Thirteen
Grandma's old house. This is the original farmhouse. It was built with slave labor. |
The field beside Grandma's old house. |
The cut field is the "field in front of the old house." The old house is not visible in this photo. This is from the rear of the field. |
There's a graveyard up near the tree line. |
Wednesday, June 01, 2022
A Poem
Tuesday, May 31, 2022
Tau Herculids Bust
Last night there was supposedly a great meteor shower, with a peak time at 1 a.m. The astronomy folks were calling it the Herculids, and it was visible near the Big Dipper.
The reason for the shower was a broken comet, SW3. The comet fell apart in 1995 and the debris from it was supposed to be visible. Or so they hoped.
I set an alarm for 12:50 a.m. and took my camera outside. I aimed it at the Big Dipper. I got excited when I counted eight meteor streaks in a few minutes, although they seemed to be outside of the camera's eye.
It's nice outside at night, though the air was a big soupy. I wondered if there was enough haze to keep me from seeing the sky looking like it was falling to earth. That's what I was hoping for, a great show.
And I saw and heard a great show - Mother Nature at her finest hour. The trees around me danced with fireflies, each one apparently dazzling itself with its green light. Fairies flirting about the trees, I thought. The peepers at the neighbor's pond were croaking mightily, too. The air smelled of sweet drying grass from where my husband cut the hayfield yesterday, and something else I couldn't identify. Pollen?
In my peripheral vision, I watched the fairies dance to the froggies croak while I searched the sky for a heavenly display of fireworks.
By the time I came inside, I'd seen a total of 14 meteor streaks.
None of them came out on the camera.
The fireflies did, though.
The green streaks may be meteors, but I'm fairly sure they're fireflies, especially that big fat one at the top.
This is not one of my better star trail photos, either. It looks like I shook the camera at some point, since the lines are a little shaky. I've lightened the picture in effort to see everything the camera captured.
It was a disappointing photo shoot, and not the "sky falling" event I was hoping for, but something a little different.
Everyone should take the time to look at the night sky once in a while.
Sunday, May 29, 2022
Sunday Stealing
I encourage you to visit other participants in Sunday Stealing posts and leave a comment. Cheers to all us thieves who love memes, however we come by them.
Saturday, May 28, 2022
Saturday 9: America, the Beautiful
Friday, May 27, 2022
A Tale of Two Women
Thursday, May 26, 2022
Thursday Thirteen
Here are 13 facts about my locality, based on the 2020 Census.
Total Population - 34,747 (100%)
Population in Households - 34,460 (99.2%)
Population in Families - 29,603 (85.2%)
Population in Group Quarters - 287 ( 0.8%) (this includes nursing home facilities)
Population Density - 64
Diversity Index - 16 (different races and ethnic groups. The lower the number, the less diverse. We are not diverse.)
Total HU (Housing Units) - 15,534 (100%)
Owner Occupied HU - 11,771 (75.8%)
Renter Occupied HU - 2,011 (12.9%)
Vacant Housing Units - 1,752 (11.3%)
Median Home Value - $274,781
Average Home Value - $312,146
Housing Affordability Index - 152 (above 100 means increased affordability)
We do not have a lot of affordable housing here, although that may be improving with the addition of apartment complexes on the southern end. Appearances and actual data are not always the same. That housing affordability index number surprised me the most.
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
He Did Not Act Alone
He did not act alone, this shooter who, at last count, had taken 19 lives and wounded countless others during a massacre in an elementary school in Uvalde, TX yesterday.
Nor did the shooter who took 10 lives at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York on May 14.
And neither did the male (they are almost always male) who killed 13 people in Virginia Beach, VA on May 31, 2019, or man who killed 12 people on November 7, 2018, in Oakland, CA.
The man who killed 17 students in Parkland, FL, in 2018 did not act alone, nor did the man who killed 61 people in Las Vegas, NV on October 1, 2017. Neither did the fellow who killed 50 people in Orlando, FL in 2016, or the guy who killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Or the man who killed 32 at Virginia Tech in 2007.
We all have blood on our hands because we sit back and offer "thoughts and prayers" as if that is going to stop this grotesque mindset that Americans have, this horrific, terrible thought that "owning my gun" is more important than the life of, well, anybody.
Our senators do nothing. This falls mostly on the Republican side, but the Democrats are proving so useless and spineless that I have come to the conclusion they are complicit, not merely complacent, in all of this, or else they'd find a work-around the stupid rules in the Senate and the House. Those are rules, not laws, and rules are meant to be broken from time to time.
Sometimes even laws need to be broken, and sometimes a perceived right is not a right. I am being inundated by opinion pieces telling me women do not have the right to have an abortion under the US Constitution, but everyone (especially men, apparently), has the right to carry a gun, even though when the US Constitution was written "bearing arms" did not mean carrying a gun. It meant being in the damn military. One can't pick and choose "rights" from that dusty document.
We have to be the most gruesome, gory, heartless, warlike bunch of people to ever live on this planet.
The blood running down the street belongs to all of us, because we accept this as the way of life in the USA. This doesn't happen in other countries. Only here. Anybody want to take a guess as to why that is?
I am all for gun reform. I am for background checks, for making people who own guns carry appropriate insurance, for taking them away from people who shouldn't have them. I am a gun owner - I live on a farm and occasionally they're necessary, when a coyote is killing a calf, or a rabid groundhog goes after a dog. My husband hunts. He pays a fee to get a license every year.
We both have had gun training. I treat guns with the utmost respect; they are locked up.
But I've blood on my hands, too. I haven't called my legislator every day demanding something be done. I've written a few letters from time to time, but it's not a constant drumbeat.
Why is it acceptable that young children have to have lock down drills in case of a massive shooting incident in this country? Why must we thrive on fear - not only of other countries, but of our own people? I do not believe any of this has to be because "it is what it is." Acceptance indicates lack of desire to change.
I do not accept this.
Isn't it time that we the people, the ones who are really supposed to run this government, stand up and say, no more?
Isn't it time we the people bring the country back to some semblance of sanity? Wasn't one million dead from Covid enough for two years?
My god, how much death do we need to prove our points? How many more elementary school children have to die to prove that certain segments of the population only care about youth when they're in a woman's uterus? Those elementary school children had heartbeats too.
Out, damn spot! Out I say! . . . What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?
Take back our power, people. Wash the blood from our hands, remove the idiots in office, find our footing, and regain our sense of society as a whole. We are all one. We are not islands unto ourselves. We're a society. We're supposed to look out for one another. We're supposed to be brothers and sisters.
It's way past time we act like it.
Tuesday, May 24, 2022
Monday, May 23, 2022
Three Cheers!
Last week, I finished up my last bottle of Cheer Free & Gentle. I've used this detergent since before I married. My mother used it.
Yes, there's a note on the bottle reminding my husband not to use this detergent. |
But even before the pandemic, it had become hard to find.
After the pandemic, it was nigh impossible, unless I wanted to pay $30.00 for a 64 oz bottle on Amazon.
I did not.
So, I used it only on my personal intimate clothes, and squeezed about a year out of this bottle.
I tossed it into the recycling bin with much sorrow.
Then, on a whim, I checked for it again on Amazon. Still $30 a bottle. A comment, though, suggested it was now available at Walmart again.
I checked there and hit the jackpot!
I could get Cheer Free & Gentle for $8.08 for a 64 oz bottle! Yes!
It arrived over the weekend, and I am so pleased.
For my other clothes, I use All Free. I have been asked in the past why I don't simply use All Free for everything.
The answer?
Because I suspect I can use All Free on my intimates and not break out, but I know for certain I can use Cheer Free on them and not have any issues.
Hurray for Cheer Free!