Living vicariously

Today while I was at the grocery store, there was a young girl behind the counter in the bakery and she was talking to a fellow employee about going home to wash her face & put on new make-up and get ready to go out.

I said that I can’t remember the last time I’d talked to someone who said they were going out on New Year’s Eve and neither could all the other eavesdroppers! 

I asked if she could let us know her plans for the evening.  She said she was going to a Peruvian Restaurant with her boyfriend and his parents and then to Bayside in Miami for the rest of the evening.  I told her I would be living vicariously through her evening!

I remember when I went out to a restaurant on New Year’s Eve with a young man & his parents.  Fifty years later, that same young-at-heart man & I are staying home on this New Year’s Eve & will be lucky if we stay up as late as 10:30pm !

Oh, and at that restaurant of long ago – I had lobster.  It was $4.50.

Hope you have some Happy New Year’s Eve memories, too. 
Let’s all make a Happy New Year’s Eve memory …

NPN – NinePatchNews is back

The AOL Quilting Community had a nice newsletter back when the AOL Quilting Community was up and running on America Online. Now, some volunteers have gotten together and have brought it back as a monthly newsletter.

It has computer tips, quilting help, stories, quilt projects, links and other interesting stuff. Here’s the link to go and join up -http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ninepatchnews/join After joining, you will get the newsletter in your emailbox every month.

How’d You Get So Rich?

DH & I were pleasantly surprised to see Joan Rivers’ new TV show on the TVLand channel last night How’d You Get So Rich?  It was very entertaining.  The premise of the show is how many times have you driven by a beautiful (expensive) home & wondered what the owners did for a living to afford such a place.

Very close to our heart was the first segment about the inventor of Billy Bob Teeth.  Yes, he made millions.  DH bought a pair of those teeth many years ago and he enjoyed amusing the little grandchildren with those teeth.

One of our grandsons was so impressed with the teeth that he saved up his weekly allowance & bought his own pair of Billy Bob Teeth.  When he had his school pic taken that year, he persuaded the photographer to take a second pic of him with his Billy Bob Teeth.

He proudly presented the pic to his Gpa!  Aaaah, DH’s wild and wacky sense of humor gets passed on through the genes!  LOL

Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

Oh, the joy of a grilled cheese sandwich!  It’s one of those things you eat that tends to bring back memories. 

I remember my mom’s grilled cheese.  She’d put a pat of butter in a frying pan and fry the sandwich in there, one at a time.  Usually served with Campbell’s Tomato Soup on the side.  She used Wonder bread or bakery bread.  The kind of bread you can’t buy anymore cuz of my government’s idea of protecting me from trans-fat.

I spread margarine on the outside of the bread, cheese in the inside.  Has to be Kraft American Cheese slices.  Cooked on my griddle, stove top.  Can fit 4 at a time on there.  Serve with some potato chips on the side and a Kosher Dill Pickle from the crock at the Festival Flea Market.

My DH turned me on to this – sprinkle a bit of shredded Cheddar Cheese on the American Cheese before closing up the sandwich for grilling.  What a difference that makes.  He likes his sandwich cut into 4 pieces.  Another comfort thing.

Sometimes, I like cooked bacon strips in the sandwich.
Sometimes, I like sliced tomato in the sandwich.

I bet there are more variations on a grilled cheese sandwich, but I always come back to the basic one – just grill it!

Happy Birthday Deloris Smith wherever you are

Isn’t it funny how things stick in our minds over the years? Deloris was my best friend in St. Casimir’s grade school. After all these many years, I still think of her on her birthday, which is the day after mine. Yes, I had a very nice birthday yesterday. Thank you Kim for a lovely lunch and such a beautiful bouquet. And so nice of all the friends and relatives with their phone calls and cards and good wishes. I thank you all for thinking of me.

Lately, I’ve been in the sewing room doing some (horrors) mending and repair. But, it does make me feel better getting some put-aside tasks completed. I have a saying tacked up in my sewing room:

Nothing is as fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of uncompleted tasks

Now if only I would pay more heed to that …

I have a recipe for you today.

Hocus Pocus Crispies
This is one I’ve been making since 1977; the photo is scanned from the old recipe I had cut out from a magazine. It’s a family favorite and a company favorite. I remember SIL Tammy really enjoying these when she came to visit and she has them in her favorite recipes.

I went to the pillsbury.com website and did a search for the recipe and was surprised to find that it was “not found”. And a google search was fruitless. I thought that would never do – so, I am putting it online. Here’s a link to the PDF – http://anotherpat.com/HocusPocusCrispies.pdf
Enjoy!

Recipe – Brownie Waffles

I have an old recipe box. It contains old recipes that I wrote on 3” x 5” cards and also contains recipes others have given me over the years – in their handwriting. I am so glad I kept those handwritten recipes over the years. Seeing the handwriting of dear friends who have passed on keeps them close to my heart when I read their recipes.

I have some of my mother’s recipes in her handwriting that I would never part with. The recipe itself might not be so terrific, but it was a recipe she enclosed in a letter, many years ago. Mom died in November 1993, but each time I read a recipe that she wrote makes me feel as if she’s close.

Also in the box are odd-assorted leaflets from past appliances. I don’t throw away many things! LOL

DH was looking thru the old recipe box and came across a leaflet that came with a waffle iron we were gifted with when we were first married. Now, we are coming up on 48 years of wedded bliss, so the leaflet is old! No longer have the waffle iron, but I do remember it. It was round and had an electrical cord that was wrapped with black & white threads. The recipe that interested him was “Brownies for the Waffle Iron”.

I suggested using a box of Brownie mix, rather than making the recipe from scratch. So, that’s what he did. Just follow the directions on the box. DH added a ½ to 1 cup of chopped walnuts to the batter. The Brownie Waffles were excellent!

If you make these waffles, here are some suggestions – Put a spoonful of batter on each quadrant of the waffle baker to get “Waffle Cookie Brownies”. They release easier and are easier to serve than if you made one big waffle. Remove the hot waffles with a spatula to a cooling rack or parchment paper. They firm up as they cool. I like to break up the Brownie Waffles & sprinkle over ice cream. You can also sprinkle some mini chocolate chips or mini M&Ms on the ice cream. MMMM delicious!

Jason Quilts – Day Four

Happy Birthday, Greg!

Jason is a shoe-less sew-er.
All the gkids seems to take off their shoes as soon as they come into our house. They always place their shoes at the back door. That comes from habit. When the gkids were little, they were taught that if you’re gonna take your shoes off at Gma’s house, put them by the back door so that we know where the shoes are when we need to put them back on again.

On some wonderful days, I had 6 pairs of little shoes, in various sizes, at the back door. Nowadays all of the gkids shoes are much bigger, as are they. And nowadays we have 7 gkids. We had gkids in 2 batches. Had 6 gkids in 7 years. What a bunch that was when they all got together! When youngest gkid turned 7, we had a 7th gkid. Oh, how lucky the 7th gkid is – he has 6 cousins who adore him and teach him so many things. And, yah, sometimes some real funny things, too!

I’m a shoes-on sew-er. Sometimes, I am a barefoot sew-er. What kind of sew-er are you?
Today we had a shorter sewing session than usual. But, Jason managed to cut out all the pieces needed for 3 blocks. He completed 1 block.

He put together a block that has 17 patches. And it turned out perfect! The horizontal lattice in the block lines up from row to row. Good job, Jas! Today’s block – top left.

The first 3 blocks were made from strip sets and then cut up as blocks. I thought the last 3 blocks should give him some piecing practice, so I had him cut the patches individually and sew them together as rows. Actually, the shorter pieces are easier to keep straight when sewing. And are easier to press.

Jason is on Winter Break now, so we just might get 2 sewing days next week. Will also have to do some more shopping, as we need the fabric for the sashing around each block.

Blogging and shopping

Have now added some gadgets (widgets). What fun it is to do that kind of stuff. You know, if you have always wanted to have a blog – it’s not that difficult to do. This blog is on blogger.com/. You can have your blog be viewable to everyone or you can have it be private. Or you can have it be private with an option of sharing it with others who are on your list.

What is really nice about blogs is the organizing and the archiving that the blog does -- without any effort from the blogger. And those cute little widgets. All these new words I’m learning …

So, you could journal your stuff and have it private, just to be viewed and accessed by yourself. Once you do this little bit to the blog and then do that little bit to the blog – ya get hooked! And it’s not a bad addiction! I found it has put my writing skills back into practice. Remember how we used to write letters, put a stamp on them and drop them in a mailbox? The best part was getting the letter in your mailbox and then sit down in a quite corner and enjoy the letter that someone took time to write and send just to you. We all had good writing skills then.

I have gone green with my shopping. My house was getting overgrown with plastic bags, so I did some hunting on the Net and made some fabric shopping bags, using features I liked on various bags. I wrote up a webpage on what I did – anotherpat.com/fabricbags.htm

Are you using fabric bags for shopping? Have you made any fabric shopping bags?