Day 2 Day radishes

April 30/ Warning

Just a note.  Do not save the waffle batter for three days.

april 29/ Photoshop and Obama

I have resisted buying Photoshop Elements, the software program for pictures.  I replaced what I had because anything anyone wrote about editing their pictures, and how to do it, was always in Photoshop Elements. The learning curve is steep for me, but slowly I am learning.  I have two instruction books, one for baby photographers and one for adults, but only adults with smarts.  I love the book for babies as it draws a picture, and says, “put your hand here and right click. 

 

Today is the celebration of Obama’s one hundred days.  I am still flabbergasted at the incident of the White House having a fly over in Air Force One in New York City at 1,000 feet with two fighter jets tagging along for photo ops.  In Seattle at Fleet week, the Blue Angels come, we know they are coming and it is exciting.  But if you do not know, yikes, especially as in New York you have had terrorists flying into city buildings, you could be honestly terrified. 

 

And as a lot of people have pointed out, the White House could have given any teenager 10 minutes, and they could have Photoshoped the scene. I tried to Photoshop the scene of Air Force One flying by my house but it was my first time merging photos and, I am not a teenager. I think  

April 28/Waffles and watermelon

My girls are cooking a big batch of steel cut oats and refrigerating them.  Mornings they dish out the required amount and microwave the glob.  One daughter will eat them cold.   A nutritious morning.  I suppose it is accompanied with fruit or juice. 

 

I have been making waffles.  The recipes are for serving 4 people.  And I do not have a waffle making “RATIO”.  So I have been using the leftover four person batter the next day.  Use your How to Cook Everything Cookbook because you can vary waffles a dozen ways with other grains, and nuts, and fruit..  Mark Bittman has dozens of ways to change the recipe.If you have not yet purchased the book, I think that Costco could still have some.  

 

Making waffles, if you use a recipe that does not separate the eggs, takes about the same time as assembling the ingredients.  It is very fast.  The next day is super fast.  I do admit that you do need a good waffle iron.  The waffles are only slightly inferior to the first day;  likely no more than the oatmeal the following day. 

 

Lately I have been craving watermelon.  Maybe I did not eat enough fruit this winter?  But currently it tastes great if not seasonal or very green.  I asked myself why I would like this red flesh so much.  It is because it is so nutritious.  I did not know this.  I thought it was sugar and water in a rind.  It is a great antioxidant.  It helps remove swelling (although I doubt it in the case of pregnancy).  Anything you have every heard of, it helps.  One article said that you should keep a watermelon in your medicine chest.  

April 27/ little happenings and news

Saturday was opening of trout season.  And Sunday my husband and I drove by some lakes to see what there was to see.  Many boats were out and there was double the number on Saturday. After church Sunday all that the men could talk about was the fishing condition and how many did they caught.  The men were very animated and beamed while telling a fish story.  While a few caught over their limit, it was really catch and release.  I am not sure that I have ever caught a fish.  I would like to be in a row boat catching a fish every time I put my line out.  This little boy was fishing with dad and granddad from the shore. For them it was meat.  Mama and the girls sat in the car.  

 

Absolutely amazing.  We saw at dusk a pair of salt water swans down near the shore. Where we last lived there was a local pair of swans.  Each year they hatched a baby but the eagles came and ate the eggs or the baby.   Each year people tried to save the babies, but eagles are sharp and the swans do not want anyone near the baby.  It was our delight to see the swans chase and torment the eagles.  Swans were the only thing I have seen that can put the fear of God in an eagle. 

 

More amazing.  Today Mr. Radish announced at breakfast that in our life time there will be car-airplanes.  We watched a video on the computer of the plane flying and then folding the wings to drive in traffic.  The two person car looks like a Volkswagen bug with a tail and two wings folded up.  This vehicle can go from one vehicle to another in 30 seconds.  The cost is $190,000 and will be ready for delivery in 2011.  Forty vehicles are on order, mostly by pilots.  This blows my mind when I think of every family having two of them and the sky full of flying cars.  Will we ever see the sky again? 

April 24/ Mr. Radish/blankets/ Charles Krauthammer

This could be the last day of Mr. Radish’s trial.  I say this is one of the top ten trials of his life.  He makes some money, but not like the other attorney’s in the case.   He has been very entertained, and he has had few responsibilities, and everyone likes him.  This type situation comes along rarely, maybe twice in my husband’s career, and I can think of no one who deserves it more than him. 

 

Yesterday, I celebrated Mother’s Day.  I had gift from daughter NoName who had bought this for me in

China

and Mr. Radish brought it home and forgot to give it to me.  I had never heard of a silk comforter.  But this is what it is.  I like comforters, but only the kind with down. Synthetic will not do. I had put my down comforters away because I thought they stuffed up my nose. 

 

Yesterday I was making the bed and I thought I would jump the gun of the holiday and I opened up the package and put the silk comforter on my bed.  It is wonderful. It is light, but warm and it is so soft.  I have only slept with it one night but so far applause is required.  Wow!

 

Today I read Charles Krauthammer’s column from the Wall Street Journal http://townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2009/04/24/obama_the_grand_strategy?page=1 This article is about how Obama might return money to offset the budget deficit. 

April 22/ Earth Day

I guess that this is Earth Day and you should see some EARTH.  I drove my gas guzzler to take these pictures for you, contrarian that I  am. The sun was out and the vitamin D was happying up my eyes.  All of those gas guzzling tractors are out there working the fields working the earth to ready it for seeds.  Today they are planting seed potatoes from a machine that moves through the field with six people sitting on the tail.  I presume they decide when to plant the potatoes.  Maybe the people cut the potatoes into chunks and feed them into the machine.  

Your  very own potatoes may come from the Skagit Valley.  And in the fall, when there is a harvest,  and you make mashed potatoes, give thanks to the people on the back of the seeder. 

April 21/ car sense

If we thought perfume scents were difficult to buy, try automobiles.  Mr. Radish and I have come to the end of our Acura lease.  This was a perfect car. It was reliable, it was comfortable, and it was luxurious.  We loved being in it.  But now the lease has run and we have to do something else.  One option is to buy that car, plus pay he dealer a bunch more money because Mr. Radish drove it over the contract limit. 

 

I made Mr. Radish look at Fords.  I love Ford because they did not take the government handout.  And I was irritated with Mr. Acura and their cheesy way of telling us that for $700.00. a month, we could have a new car.  No, no, no. 

 

One of our problems is that we need a crystal ball.  We do not know how many more years Mr. Radish will work, hopefully for forever.  Still at seventy he needs a good driving, comfortable car. Another thing . . . a car has to be reliable. One thing we both hate is repairs. A new engine or transmission would be like jumping into a snake pit. On the other hand there is the gasoline problem.  Apparently we, the

US

, is not going to drill for our own oil, and Chavez is saying come take some of his.  So we looked at a fusion fuel car.  However, when you wear the battery out on a battery powered car the new battery is $10,000.00. Still it gets 41 miles to the gallon in town.  You might as well go buy a new roof.  Mr. Radish got in the fusion car reluctantly but was pleased with certain aspects of the car.  This is one thing we both liked, the Fords have little red light that shines in your mirror when a car is in your blind spot, passing you. God has been with me a lot of times when I failed to look in the blind spot.   There is also a buzzing when a car is going to pass by as you back out in a parking lot.  I could have saved thousands of dollars with that gadget in my past.  This is to say nothing of the backup camera.

 

My husband is now in research mode. He loves to know everything especially how much the dealer paid for the car.   But for me what both Acura and Ford agencies have in common are car salesmen.  Some are cuter than others; in the past I have had the best success with the cutest ones. 

april 20/ Talking perfume cents

Suddenly it dawned on me that I do not have a scent.  This arose because I have been planning my funeral service. One daughter asked me to do this last summer and I laughed it off.  But two weeks ago I felt like I was moving in on being an invalid. So I starting thinking about funeral services and came up with no real plans.  But Friday I happened to go to a very lovely funeral service and I now am getting rather enthusiastic.  For the finale I want the triumphal March from Aida played on the trumpet.  I want my girls to wear red shoes. 

 

My Mother had a scent.  It smelled awful on me, but Femme by Rochas was identifying.  I could have found her blindfolded if she was in the room with a thousand women. 

It occurred to me that if I wanted my grandchildren to remember a particular scent, or at the very least that I smelled good, I had better get on it.

 

I am not really a perfume person.  Somehow perfume and pajamas as you clean the kitchen in the morning is a disconnect.  I have always felt that you had to be properly dressed to wear a scent.  Cheap and Lazy.

Saturday my daughter Margaret took me shopping to Nordstrom’s, and I was in addition able to buy her birthday gift.  This shopping experience was better than the Bobbi Brown counter. Even Bobbi Brown can not make me look really good. But  a perfume can  make me smell sweet.  At  time we were the only ones shopping for perfume.  But there were about seven sales women.  When we needed a fresh nose, we would bring in someone new to sniff us. 

Not having shopped for myself for perfume in the last twenty years except in the airport duty free, where I thought I had to make a score, this is what I learned Saturday. 

 

There are personal scents and there are public scents.  Personal you only smell on yourself and they must be reapplied frequently.  While public, even your grandsons who do not want to especially get near you or they will be kissed, can smell you.  I actually like the flavor of the personal scents better, but I have to remember what my goal is.

 

Perfume stays on better if you also buy the body cream to apply first, but that drives up the price by a half. 

 

You want to shop where they are giving gifts with purchase.  And if you are not really sure about the scent, get three samples of the same scent and wear it for a week before you purchase.   I did not take my own advice.

 

I bought Vera Wang’s Sheer Veil.  As it turned out, it was not my grandsons’ first choice.  My first choice was the grandson’s first choice.  But I do trust my daughter, and she just might want to remember a fragrance too.  I am going to try to use up the whole bottle.

April 17/ Black day at Cake Corral

Oh Radish, you just exaggerate.  You always cook so well. 

 

Today I have baked cake to take down to my daughter’s house for tomorrow’s dinner.   you can see by the first picture that I had high hopes. I have read and read.  One of my books is BakeWise, by Shirley O. Corriher who is the guru of the chemistry of baking.  My husband has complained of my last cakes as being too dry. So this recipe had a chance of being moist and dense.  It’s main ingredient is sugar and the second is chocolate.  In the frosting the first ingredient, the one with the most quanity and power, is chocolate and the second, sour cream. 

 

I measured correctly.  I think I did the procedure correctly.  But here it is.  The good news is that it will likely taste good, but it will be sugar chocolate, not cake.  I may have to give up cake baking.  My ego is involved.  The punch line is the picture. 

April 16/ You Tube and jeans

It is worth your going on You Tube and finding the segment on Susan Boyle singing on the program which is the English equivalent of American Idol.          She says that she is going to make the audience rock.

Here

Today in George Will’s column, he writes about an article that he read in the Wall Street Journal.  The subject is blue jeans and how they have become the American Uniform. He says that going through any supermarket or airport all the boys will be dressed like their fathers, or another way of saying it is that all the father’s will be dressed like their boys.  In America, we strive to look equally shabby.  

Two men,Levis and Strauss, you may remember, brought canvas around the horn to use for tents and covered wagons.  The material subsequently came to be used for gold miner pants, with their grommets to make the pants sturdier.  George Will says that today’s jeans are prewashed, pretreated, to look like what they are not.   He suggests that the most that is required of our jeans is be there when the golf clubs are hoisted into van.  And . . . he suggests that this is child’s play of reminiscing our old agrarian ways and what promoted McMansions so we could pretend to be what we are not. Mr. Will then suggests that maybe it is time to put aside our childish ways. 

 

This then made me think. Where in our culture, do we want our common denominator in education, morality, individuality, freedom, to be?  You can even add to this list more common things like music, housekeeping, age defying cosmetics.  Phew! For beauty treatments, we aim high. 

 

Well, at the very least I am not going to wear jeans today, but I do not have many options. And for sure I am going to put on makeup and some sort of scent.  Today I am going to try to look like a grownup.