mycalicocat

How about talking about our favorite item of yesteryear that is no more. that's opposite of techno.:) mine is orange crush in the brown bottle. there was something about the brown bottle that made it taste better than any other orange soft drink. you will feel alot better if you could have an orange crush right now.

Sporcupine writes, " I'm attaching the first photo of the kitten tentatively known as MeikoYosarian Fitzgerald. He found a warm place between me and my laptop, andnow I can't move my legs without waking him up, but I can take a picture!"

Which she did with her cell phone.

The Queen of Sheba has noted by e-mail that former FEMA Director Michael Brown is now planning his own consulting firm. He plans to offer emergency planning services.

This led me to ponder the possiblity of having my own consulting firm, and after some thought about what I might consult on, I narrowed it down to three

Ballet
Desktop organization
Haute Couture

You are invited to submit your own, and then we can go public and get rich fast.

Writing that I'm thankful for having food, shelter, clothing and safety during a year in which so many have been miserable or in harm's way doesn't feel right -- even though I do know how fortunate I am.
Anyway, I'm going to be thankful for Vincent Van Gogh. We watched a video a while ago and when this came on the screen, I remembered seeing the original back in the 1960s at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I had seen plenty of his paintings in books, or in prints, but never that one, and it just about stopped my heart.
Also, I am thankful for Jane Austen and Thomas Jefferson.
Your turn.
p.s. If there's some art you want me to post, let me know by e-mail (shotsi@alltel.net).

Imagine that your teenaged self could be plunked down in 2005. What would surprise you most about the world today? Include inventions, improvements, events, trends, fashions, foods, things you’d be shocked at, things you’d applaud - whatever comes to mind.

I got back from the wonderful mountains and jumped into a mountain of work. Just Monday night had to go to a six course Pecan Dinner at Langston house which so elegant and delicious as to be downright decadent. We ATE for three hours! I'll get back to this. Then late yesterday afternoon, I went to the eye doctor and had my eyes dilated. NOW I am neither stuffed nor half-blinded, so I go to Calicocat and discover that it doesn't want to work, and had to do all kinds of things to get it functioning again from this end.

Hope everybody else is ready to blog around a bit because I want to talk about Thanksgiving memories.

When I was a kid in the 1940s, we had Thanksgiving each year in Garden Valley, Georgia, which isn't a real town but a farming community where my grandmother had grown up and where her brother and his family still lived in the family home. That was when Grownups Ruled, and the deal was - since there were so many people - that the adults ate first, and then they cleared the table and reset it for the kids. (I would never do that to a kid myself)
My memory of the food is that it was spectacularly delicious, but it may just be that I was very hungry!! I was a very picky eater as a child (wish I'd kept that trait) but there were always things that I loved. We never had turkey then except at Thanksgiving and Christmas, so it was a big deal. (There were turkeys at the farm, and I was always afraid of the big gobbler.)My grandmother told me that there was a time when turkeys were boiled because nobody had an oven big enough for one) There were always creamed tiny butterbeans that I piled on top of mashed potatoes. There were both white and sweet potatoes. The sweet potatoes were called Humpty Dump in my family. This was mashed sweet potatoes with raisins and (I think now) a lot of brown sugar and butter, topped with marshmallows. The marshmallows were always perfect despite the fact that the cooks were using a wood stove! (How they cooked so well without temperature control is beyond me)
There were especially wonderful, very moist cakes -- not like any cakes I've had since. Real coconut cake, for example, and caramel. (I don't think we had fruitcake and ambrosia at Thanksgiving. I associate ambrosia with Christmas)

Sporcupine sends her recipe for Murdered Pot Roast

"Put a 3 pound roast, two pounds of potatoes in chunks, half a pound of coined carrots (thick), a quarter pound of sliced mushrooms, three cups water with three cubes beef boullion, two tablespoons minced garlic, and the spices of your choice in a crockpot on low, planning to cook for 12 hours. Actually cook for 18. The results look like an ashen mess, but taste great. You can serve the roast with a salad fork."

I claim the Assault and Battery Apple Sauce trophy. When I was a child bride living in Utah, a friend I acquired a bushel of apples. We decided to make applesauce and put it up in jars, anticipating enough for the long winter ahead. Who needs a recipe? We peeled all the apples, cut them up threw them into a big pot of boiling water (like potatoes)and boiled them vigorously for a half hour or so, then we dumped them into a colander to drain all the taste away. Then we mashed them up. Since there was no taste left, so we added a lot of sugar and cinnamon and stuff. We each had one jar of applesauce

Other criminal acts against innocent food will be welcomed.

Let's see if we can make it to 50 on the "Whatsoever" list.

We all have our great moments. Here are two of mine.

My daughter, who was my first baby, was born in the evening, and I saw her briefly as a red-faced little squawling creature. Then I slept through the night. This was in a very small army hospital on the Salt Lake desert.
Early in the morning they brought me a baby wrapped up in a receiving blanket and handed me a bottle of sugar water to give her. I held the baby and smiled at the baby and talked to the baby and thought deep serious mommy thoughts and tried to get the baby to take the bottle.
Then the woman in the adjoining room yelled out. “Hey, you brought me the wrong baby! I’ve got Charlotte Perkins’ baby!”
The nurses were mortified, and so was I because she had recognized sporcupine as my baby at a glance while I was forming a lifetime bond with her little boy.

Once I was beating up some cake frosting with a portable mixer, and the cord detached from the mixer and fell into the frosting. I picked it up and licked the frosting off and shocked my tongue.

Anybody else willing to share a great moment?

Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. I always liked the inclusion of "lovely" in that list. I'm going to suggest several that probably had nothing to do with what Paul meant. I invite you to add yours, and we can keep this one going until we get up to 100. 1. The faces of very young children when they are very serious about something or trying to do something new. 2. Pipevine Swallowtails 3. Hydrangeas 4. The Star-Spangled Banner sung the way any particular American likes to sing it. 5.