20 Dec 2014 2 Comments
Because I hung up my apron ten years ago when I married a cook, I don’t post recipes that require 37-million ingredients and tedious hours to assemble — I figure most people are as cranked about that as I am. Not all, I get that — but it’s cool for the rest of us to have a few go-tos that are within the realm of quick-ish possibility. Ergo …
From 12 Tomatoes. Check them out here: http://12tomatoes.com
18 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
Say hello to two of my great-grandmothers. Of the four I was blessed to have, the lady on the right is the only one I remember. Great-Grandma Cummings was the mother of my WWI soldier grandpa, and she was as sweet and wonderful as they make them. Great-Grandma Somerville on the left was a midwife and ran a boarding house and she too was amazing. The grandbabies they’re holding may be my Uncle Bob and Aunt Bette — waiting for Baby-Aunt Barbara to weigh in on that.
Great-Grandma Somerville used to tell her new mothers, when she helped them bathe, “I’ll wash down as far as possible and up as far as possible, and you can wash Possible.” She makes me think of Rose Kennedy without all the money.
11 Dec 2014 6 Comments
Remember the story about my grandfather last week, and the fact that he and my grandmother raised nine children? (Link below.) Here’s a photo of their eldest and youngest, just two of their six sons. This is my Uncle Bob, home on leave, holding his baby brother Roger, probably around 1944.
https://playingfortimeblog.com/2014/12/04/a-fairytale-for-throwback-thursday/
06 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
A young guy from North Dakota moves to Florida and goes to a big “everything under one roof” department store looking for a job.
The manager says, “Do you have any sales experience?”
The kid says, “Yeah. I was a vacuum salesman back in North Dakota.”
The manager’s unsure, but he likes the kid and figures he’ll give him a shot, so he gives him the job. “You start tomorrow. I’ll come down after we close and see how you did.”
His first day on the job is rough, but he gets through it. After the store is locked up, the manager comes down to the sales floor to check on how the kid did on his first day. “How many customers bought something from you today?”
The kid frowns and looks at the floor and mutters, “One.”
The manager replies, “Just one?!!? Our employees average 20 to 30 customer-sales a day. That will have to change and fast if you want to continue your employment here. We have very strict standards for our sales force here in Florida. One sale a day might have been acceptable in North Dakota, but you’re not on the farm anymore, son.”
The kid takes his beating, but continues to look at his shoes. The manager feels kind of bad for chewing him out on his first day, so he asks half sarcastically, “So, how much was your one sale for?”
The kid looks up at his manager and says “$101,237.65.”
The manager, astonished, says, “$101,237.65?!? WTF did you sell?”
The kid says, “Well, first, I sold him some new fish hooks. Then, I sold him a new fishing rod to go with his new hooks. Then, I asked him where he was going fishing and he said down the coast, so I told him he was going to need a boat. We went down to the boat department, and I sold him a twin-engine ChrisCraft. Then he said he didn’t think his Honda Civic would pull it, so I took him down to the automotive department and sold him that 4×4 Expedition.”
The manager says “A guy came in here to buy a fish hook, and you sold him a boat and a TRUCK!?”
The kid says, “No, the guy came in here to buy tampons for his wife, and I said, ‘Dude, your weekend’s shot, you should go fishing.'”
02 Dec 2014 2 Comments
So Tuesday around here is evolving into a day for thankfulness and dancing, but will one day a week be enough? I think not! And on that note, I hope you’re making only HAPPY LISTS this winter.
30 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
So many questions. Where are we? Is this real? Does it matter? Can we stay?
23 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
Aruba, Jamaica, ooh I wanna take you to
Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama
Key Largo Montego,
baby why don’t we go
Ooh I wanna take you down to Kokomo,
we’ll get there fast
and then we’ll take it slow
That’s where we wanna go,
way down in Kokomo.
17 Nov 2014 4 Comments
Due to circumstances beyond our control, Playing for Time is currently on hiatus. It’s complicated. First there was a road trip across seven states, followed by a reunion of great import along with great joy. And in the interim, much fine wine and stellar food. And since. More of the same. Frigid-ass weather has followed us on our journeys, so there has been nesting in Irish pubs with fireplaces and Guinness and pub frites and welcoming beer wenches. We are now in the Deep South, but ensconced in a liberal enclave, basking in the deliciously sarcastic company of our son. We shall return anon. And on. And on …
08 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
Cream Cheese Sugar Cookies
1 cup sugar
1 cup margarine or butter, softened
3 oz. package of cream cheese
1/4 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Almond extract
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg yolk (reserve white)
2 cups all-purpose flour
Blend together sugar, margarine, cream cheese, salt, almond extract, vanilla, and egg yolk with mixer. Mix in flour until well blended.
Roll into a ball and wrap in plastic wrap.
Refrigerate for two hours.
Heat oven to 375 degrees. Roll out dough, one third at a time, on a lightly floured surface. Using a cookie cutter dipped in flour, cut out cookies as close together as possible.
Place the cookies one inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets. To prevent breaking, move cookies to and from baking sheets with a wide spatula or pancake turner.
Leave cookies plain or, if desired, brush with slightly beaten egg white and spring with colored sugar.
Bake for 7 to 10 minutes or until bottoms of cookies are a light golden brown. Cool completely.
{My mom always told me the most important part of making sugar cookies was to take them out as soon as they were even slightly brown on the bottom, or not at all. I took mine out before they had even browned and left them on the cookie sheet to cool. That made them extra soft and delicious.}
If desired, use the almond glaze below.
Almond Glaze:
1 cup confectioner’s sugar
1/4 tsp. almond extract
2 Tb. water
4 drops of food coloring
Stir all ingredients until smooth.
Pour 1 teaspoon of glaze on each sugar cookie. Use the back of the teaspoon to spread glaze evenly over cookie. Let glaze dry.
04 Nov 2014 7 Comments
So we made it past the Halloween shenanigans, and now the fast train that was 2014 is bearing down on Thanksgiving and Christmas when hearts overflow and gratitude gets top billing for a few short weeks.
In the spirit of the season I’m asking myself, Self, what are you most grateful for? I always like to get a second opinion on weighty matters so I asked my husband, too. He suggested that maybe I’m thankful I don’t live in my car or under a bridge, or that I eat good food at a table every day instead of from a dumpster. He may or may not have mentioned the clean water that flows on demand from every tap in the house, but it would be just like him to do that. I’m pretty freaking thankful for all those things, sure, and a comprehensive list of my personal benedictions wouldn’t have any place to end.
But I knew we had a winner when he said, “Well, you should be thankful you aren’t any shorter than you are.” For a hot second I felt pissed, not grateful, but I’m a realist and I’ve seen the pictures — I’m clearly not as height-intensive as some people out there.
After a careful examination of the evidence, however, I feel I’ve been mislabeled — It isn’t that I’m short, he simply overachieved in height-training, much as in everything else he does. And just like that, we have a perfectly legit place to start on this being thankful thing. I’ve GOT this. The Big Turkey and the Elf on a Shelf (I detest that li’l sumbish) are putting stars next to my name as we speak.
Moonbeam and Othello say hey and peace out …
30 Oct 2014 2 Comments
My Aunt Bonnie, who was so very cool, my cousins Vickie and Bruce, and little me next to our grandparents’ house on a summer day, sometime before 1950.
29 Oct 2014 Leave a comment
After comments from Facebook friends like “I’m so jealous,” and “I want to MOVE,” I’m thinking I should add a disclaimer to yesterday’s post:
Lawrence is obviously not heaven on earth. All of life is what we make it, and we came here with a goal of making it amazing, to make of this part of our lives all the good we possibly can, and to overlook the negative. That colors our approach to what we see every day when we wake up, what we do, where we go. Someone else could come here and have an entirely different experience and wonder why they feel let down in view of all the “hype.”
1.) Life is what you make it, and 2.) no matter where you go, there you are — two clichés that are truth just because they are. Kim and I are making up for lost time — we met late in life, we’ve both lived places we weren’t wild about, we’ve both felt stuck in routine and longing for more “soul” food. We don’t have the luxury of waiting and hoping at this point, so we get up every day and make fun things happen, whether we step outside our own walls or not. Some may see my ramblings as bragging, but they’re my way of being thankful. I don’t want to wake up later and wish I’d appreciated life more when I had the chance.
Young people think they’ll always be that way — young. And some people just need to be told it’s okay to be happy — to give themselves permission to live, from the inside out. Just do it — regret is a killer.
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