ITS HALLOWEEN IN TAFT - BOO!

When I went for a walk yesterday morning it was fun to see some of the decorations the locals have put out to celebrate the season.

Some of the places were sincerely downright scary, and if I was a small child would definitely pause before approaching the threshhold!

From ghoulies and ghosties and long leggety beasties and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord deliver us!

~Old Scottish saying~

May Jack-o-lanterns burning bright
Of soft and golden hue
Pierce through the future’s veil and show
What fate now holds for you.
~Author Unknown







Oregon in October 2008



How quickly a year passes! I remember this day like it was yesterday, eveyone busy in the kitchen with the carving knives...the smaller pumpkins were done by the children...can you guess who's is who's? I think the expressions on the "lanterns" mirrors the personalities of each...sweet Sumi and mischievous Micah.

UH OH...Rod has the loppers out again!

Came out back last weekend and stared in SHOCK at my apricot tree...what the...?!! Well it seems my hubby thought it needed a minor which soon turned into a major pruning, and once done with the tree he became a man on a mission! My lovely bountiful herbs were soon decapitated and thinned to within inches of their lovely green lives!

Oh well...they will return with a flourish next spring I'm sure.

The trouble with gardening is that it does not remain an avocation. It becomes an obsession.
—Phyllis McGinley

AHHH...the EGG CREAM SODA!

I was recently watching an episode of Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" on tv. Anthony was in Manhattan, enjoying the slowly disappearing culinary experiences in that part of NYC ... ah, progress...out with the old (regrettably), in with the new...but I digress...the point of this is the Egg Cream Soda...a staple of the whole NY experience.

I started enjoying my own freshly whipped up egg creams this summer, they being a really great thirst quencher! It seemed whenever we'd find ourselves in Vegas (Rods job took us there often those years of 2006 - 2008), I'd make it a point to visit NY NY Hotel and Casino just for this delectable little beverage alone! Altho a stacked pastrami on rye would always magically find its way onto my tray as well. One can find it in the "re-created" streets of Manhatten just off the Casino area, in a little deli cafe that serves them both...they aren't bad either, considering you are basically in an artificial environment LOL. AND get this, contrary to what one would think, there IS no egg in this concoction. But it is simply the most delicious and thirst quenching of beverages.

A bit of history ~ the old-time New York thirst-quencher is sweet and full of fizz. In the beginning, it was a soda produced almost exclusively in New York (particularly Brooklyn). The basic ingredients are milk, seltzer, and chocolate syrup. It is traditionally made in a small Coke-style glass.
True New Yorkers insist that it is not a classic egg cream without Fox's U-Bet Chocolate Syrup (I have to use Hersheys, but still, pretty darned good!). It is perfectly proper to gulp down an egg cream. In fact, egg cream will lose its head and become flat if it is not enjoyed immediately. I often whip one up in my own little kitchen, and savor the frothy beverage when the temperatures climb. Try one! You start by putting about an inch of milk into a glass. Then add a little seltzer. Now pour in some chocolate syrup. Make it heavy or cheap, its your drink. After stirring this mixture with a spoon until all the chocolate is well blended add seltzer to the mix to make up about ¾ the glasses volume...the foam will quickly fill the glass...make sure your seltzer is fresh for the desired effect, the coveted foam! ENJOY!

ORIGAMI BIRDS from the WINTER OF 2004

When my son was locked in his 6 X 8 ft windowless cell (think of a very small bathroom you share 24 hrs a day along with another person) during that whole year of his marijuana prosecution, some days he would pass a few hours folding colored paper I'd send him into lovely little origami sculptures. I'd get a new one every now and then, folded inside a letter, and it would always make me smile, knowing he'd managed to find some brief escape, that for a short time at least that particular day, he'd been free in a sense.

'It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity ~ Carved on the wall of his cell in the Tower of London by an unknown prisoner 300 years ago to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment.