This is day two of the 20 Days of Chill writing challenge hosted by P. J. at A ‘lil HooHaa. Please join me as we share a month of reading, writing and discovery. Today's topic is Favorite Winter Comfort Food. Wow, who knew such a simple, straightforward topic would be so challenging? There are a number of foods which fall into the category of "my favorites" and/or "comfort food", but they are not categorized by season. In fact, there are very few foods or dishes that I consider strictly seasonal. It is not taboo for me to make soup in the summer or eat ice cream in the winter. When I think of comfort food, I think of dishes like mac and cheese, a plate of potato hash, a burger, pizza or anything with bacon, none of which I would relegate to the winter months.
That which comes closest to fulfilling both the winter and comfort requirements would be pecan pie. I only make this around Christmas and it is my favorite pie. While it is obviously food, and I only make it in the winter, it seems odd to call it my favorite winter comfort food. What are some of your favorite winter and/or comfort dishes? No time to comment? Please click the visitors box below to let me know you stopped by.
Another year has run it's course, and we struggled rolled with the punches. Was it a bad year? Not entirely, but it was difficult at times. Here are a few highlights of 2014: Winter and Spring passed with barely a nod since hubby spent much of the first half of the year traveling for his job. We did have a good snow storm and a bad ice storm complete with power outage.
On the home front, I continued with the routine chores and looking after the cats. Part of those chores included yard work, which resulted with me doing a face plant into the neighbors wooden fence. Let me tell you that smarted and left me with an awesome shiner. Amazingly, other than the bruised face, there wasn't another scratch on me. We helped a good friend celebrate her 80th birthday. She was certainly surprised when she was escorted to a dinner with 15 of her closest friends.
We traveled to Pennsylvania to visit Ashley and her family. That was a week filled with fun, laughter and shared friendship. We went to an amusement park, took a steam train ride and found a lovely small town zoo in which to meander about.
Insert more business travel. Sigh! In October we made our nearly-annual trek to Madeira Beach (St. Petersburg, FL). There we ate copious amounts of seafood, went fishing at Ft. DeSoto, and took a dolphin watch cruise. My favorite non-seafood meal was DeLosa's pizza eaten on our balcony at sunset.
November brought the devastating loss of Dood at age 14. He was always the healthiest of our cats, so his brief illness and subsequent passing a little more than a year after Rosie really rocked our world.
There are always holiday memories, whether we want to remember them or not. I choose to remember them...even when one of them is of my feet going out from under me on the dance floor at a Christmas party. That it was our wine club Christmas party is irrelevant, right? Sorry, no pictures or video.
Now we have a new year before us. May it be filled with hope and joy, laughter and friendship, love and peace! Welcome to 2015.
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Christmas is a joyful time of year, but we put so much pressure on ourselves to find the perfect gift, or the right outfit for the party. So, let's all take a break from the hustle and bustle and stress of the holiday season and work a puzzle. It's simple and colorful and will only take you about 5 minutes to complete. Just click on here Christmas Puzzle to begin. (Note, the picture above is not the puzzle picture.) A few tips - the pieces are not set in their final positions, they can be turned by degrees by right clicking on the piece. In other words if it looks like it is the bottom right corner, it may actually be the top left corner. The same applies to all the pieces, otherwise it wouldn't be any challenge at all. You can also view just the border or just the middle or all the pieces, and you can change the number of pieces to increase the difficulty, and you can preview the picture like looking at the box lid to a regular jigsaw puzzle. It is timed, but just have fun with it, and if you enjoy it, feel free to share it. Merry Christmas!
Last month I had the long-awaited opportunity to visit Ashley and her family in the far-away place known as Ephrata, PA. We lived next door to each other in our youth, and although youth is rapidly fading into our middle years, we are still close despite the miles between us.
So before I get maudlin, let's get on with the fun stuff. Below is Sheba, a sweet, lovable Labradoodle who belongs to Scott, her oldest son.
Not only is she adorable, she is smart too. We were sitting outside with her and she was demonstrating her ability to come, sit, lay down, etc. when Ashley told Michael to have her l-a-y-d-o-w-n for a treat (spelling it out). Sheba responded by laying down. We tried it again and she did it again. We told Scott later that Sheba could spell.
While Ashley is born and bred a Southern gal, she has taken great pride in finding fun and interesting things to do in her own backyard. She truly does bloom where she is planted. And speaking of blooms, aren't these pretty? This is a flower tree at Knoebels Amusement Park, about an hour or so from their house.
If you like groovin' to the oldies, the group singing here would be right up your alley, with such songs as Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, Surfin' Safari and The Twist.
For a different kind of music, check out the old Wurlitzer Organ tapping out a lively beat.
What trip to an amusement park would be complete with a ride on good old wooden roller coaster? Well, it's not my cup of tea, but the boys enjoyed it. We all later enjoyed the Black Diamond ride through a haunted coal mine.
We capped off the adventure with a ride on the giant ferris wheel. It had been a very long time since I had ridden one, but it was fun and afforded us a great view of the park, and the surrounding countryside.
The next day we traveled to Strasburg to ride the steam train. It was a 45 minute journey through Amish country...literally through the cornfields. The engine puffed black smoke from it's coal fire and chugged along at a leisurely pace. Here you can see it at the station waiting to depart on it's next run.
As many exotic places as there are to explore, there are just as many here in our own corner of the world. With every trip I take I make new discoveries, whether it is a new destination or favorite vacation spot. Many thanks to Ashley and her family for hosting us!
Lititz, PA, a small town in Lancaster County, is nestled in the heart of Amish Country. Lititz, population 9,385 (2012), boasts a beautiful park with a stone-wall lined pond that stretches from one end to the other with a fountain at the entrance and culminating with the emergence of the underground spring at the end.
Surrounding the spring-fed pool is a stone wall covered in plants, moss and amongst them - spider webs, resembling those made by a funnel spider.
These, however, looks like faces on the wall.
Can you see the faces looking back at you?
Look at the wide eyes on this one. I think we frightened it.
Spiders aren't the only ones making faces. Take a look at this tree. This tall fellow looks like he was sticking his tongue out at us.
Of course, a trip to Lititz Park wouldn't be complete without ducks...lots and lots of ducks.
Take a stroll along Main Street and pop into some of the shops. There are furniture shops, restaurants, specialty boutiques and even a wine shop. This one has some colorful mushrooms for your garden. In case you can't read the sign, it says: We are so excited about the garden we wet our plants.
How much is that doggie in the window? Isn't he cute?
If you have a chance to visit this quaint little town, I don't think you'll be disappointed. Look herefor more on Lititz from my last trip.
The sunny South hasn't been so sunny lately. This is the view from my front door this morning. Not unlike many other days this winter. There were 13 strategically placed rainy days in December.
Note the 3 Saturdays and 4 Sundays! Lovely! Not too bad, though, considering there were 19 days with above normal daytime temps. Now to be honest, not all of this rain fell during daylight hours, and we have no drought concerns for the moment, but seriously...every weekend?
And then there's January with 4 rainy days already, and all but 2 days the low temps have been below average. But do you think we got any snow? All the moisture dries up before the cold air arrives. We are either freezing or floating.
I won't complain (too much) because compared to other parts of the country, the winter is balmy and fairly typical for our area. No sub-zero temperatures and no wind chills equal to my age. But would it be too much to ask for a little snow? I'd trade my webbed feet and feathers for some snow boots and mittens. So how's your weather - too hot, too cold, too much snow (or not enough)?
Having just been to Myrtle Beach for a long-awaited getaway, we pondered this question as we strolled the new boardwalk which opened in May 2010. Just what is a Myrtle, my hubby asked? I thought maybe it was named after a woman. If you ask people how Myrtle Beach got its name, you get a variety of answers from the Indians to someone's daughter. All are good guesses. The area has had many names over its history. When the Waccamaw Indians inhabited the land, it was known as Long Bay. You may recognize the name Waccamaw from the river and pottery named for it. It was later known as Withers for a family who had had property there since the 1700s. There was even a post office named for them. In 1881 the Burroughs and Collins Company of Conway purchased much of the land long held by the Withers family and Withers was now called New Town. As you can see there have been many changes and many names as is often the case with developing lands. Getting to the story behind the current name, in 1900 a contest was held to choose an official name for their town.* Credit is given to Addie Burroughs who suggested the name Myrtle Beach, named for the abundant growth of the Wax Myrtle bushes.
Image Attribution: Mary Keim
The Wax Myrtle is a North American native, and is a small tree or large shrub depending on it's environment. It is often found in landscaping, especially around the beaches but is also used in candle making, as well as having medicinal uses.
And that is how Myrtle Beach got it's name. *Myrtle Beach officially became a town in 1938, then a city in 1957.
You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness. - Jonathan Safran Foer
Rosie - November 3, 2013
I know this statement to be true. Sometimes those we love most and who bring us the most happiness can also bring us the most sadness. That they aren't always human doesn't matter, the love is still the same. Isn't that worth it? A lot has happened since my last post. I put together this quote last Monday but couldn't bring myself to publish it.
Rosie and me
Early
on Sunday morning, November 3, I said a tearful good-bye to Rosie, my constant companion for the last 16 years.
There are few things in life more heartwarming than to be welcomed by a cat. - Tay Hohoff
This is actually Beretta, the stalker cat from next door. She was helping me with my leaf blowing last week. Quite often she is there to welcome us home.
Rosie was feeling a bit artistic today. He went from this...
To this...in four easy steps.
It's amazing what you can create with a digital image and some computer software.
You can make your own customized digital artwork. Just choose your photograph, add one or more special effects to create a colorful design.
For this I used Paint Shop Pro, and layered the textures of mosaic antique and soft plastics followed another application of mosaic antique and finally applied the kaleidoscope as the finishing touch.
What interesting things have you done with your photographs?
Do you remember when the primary function of a phone was making calls? Not too many decades ago, phones were wired directly into the walls. Now we walk around not only carrying our phones in our pockets, but the internet and multi-feature cameras as well. I was playing around with the cartoon setting on my phone's camera the other day and this was the result.
This is what my Rosie looks like after having been cartooned. It reminds me of an old paint-by-number picture.
This was my lunch the other day. Hopefully the nutrition in the peanut butter offset the empty calories of the marshmallow creme - a gooey layer of carbs and sugar slathered on a slice of white bread.
The Fluffernutter was a phrase coined in 1960 for the peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich. Marshmallow Creme (also known as Marshmallow Fluff) was credited to several inventors Emma and Amory Curtis in 1913 and Archibald Query in 1917, both from Massachusetts. During World War I Emma Curtis created a recipe using peanut butter and marshmallow creme on white bread, which she then sold to Durkee-Mower Inc. They changed the name to Marshmallow Fluff, which paved the way for today's Fluffernutter. It soon gained popularity and has been proposed as the official state sandwich of Massachusetts. The Fluffernutter is still most popular in New England, so what is a Southern gal doing eating one? My Mom was from Maine and she would occasionally make them for lunch as an alternative to the many, many bologna sandwiches I ate. Now that I've admitted it, who else enjoys a Fluffernutter?
Stalking is something that happens to other people. You know famous people, important people. I never figured that would be me. She is beautiful, I will admit, and I suppose I'm partly to blame for my situation. I took pity on her and friended her because...well she lives with a bunch of real dogs.
Now I find her waiting for me when I get home. She appears from out of nowhere whenever I venture outside. She boldly shows her affection for me and tries to force her way into my home. To get my attention, she throws herself at my feet, and when I try to leave her, she chases me down and trips me. She even attacked my hubby. To make matters worse, she lives next door and can scale the fence in two seconds flat. Who knows...I may have to become a hermit. Where is the "unfriend" button?
This is the face of a stalker!
She really is beautiful.
You know I'll find you!
Her moods can be as explosive as the pistol she was named for, but in all fairness to the lovely Beretta, she has calmed down some, and I no longer fear a feline home invasion. Maybe living with six humans and a pack of dogs is sometimes just too much for her and she needs a little one-on-one with a cat person. I can understand...that would make me a little nuts too. I guess she could use a friend.
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