Norma's Wanderings around a small section of Montana |
11. National Noodle Ring Day This is not just some random food holiday about pasta forming a ring. It is about a special dish everyone can cook who has a bundt pan and noodles. The noodles have to be cooked and then filled into the bundt pan. Anything can be added now: from eggs, tomatoes, cheese, carrots, or bacon, and of course the sauce. The dish now has to bake and can later be turned upside down. Thought and opinions? Something you might try? Hmm. I am gluten intolerant. Gluten free noodles can be a pasty mess. So no - have at it y’all. Ick, ooh. Sounds like a bad hot dish for a church pot luck. So I got to thinking of church pot lucks. How many churches, before this stupid virus came and put the brakes on anything fun, still have potlucks after church? Our church does, did, will. Most of the folks at our church are vegetarian, some are vegan, some don’t eat sugar, I don’t eat dairy or gluten. So potlucks at our church can be quite interesting! There is a lady who makes homemade salsa. She’s a Latina, so it’s just a little spicy she says. Oh, right. Like being a little pregnant. Spicy is an understatement. Then we have these homemade mashed potatoes my friend makes every time with that cashew gravy. She is a vegan and makes the best vegan food. To die for, except that gravy. I can’t do the gravy. I used to eat this and wondered why I was sick every night after eating it. Seems I cannot eat cashews, darn. And we also have a woman who insists on making cakes or cupcakes for whoever has a birthday or anniversary. Except they are from cake mixes and canned frosting, with funky names in gel icing misspelled and emblazoned all over the bakes. But bless her heart for doing that kindness. People love it. I just smile and walk away from it all. There are always some dishes made with the plant protein meat-wannabes. I remember eating those once-upon-a-time. When I lived with my first husband in Collegedale, TN when he was attending college there, we were introduced to the wonderful world of vegetarian meat products. Loma Linda, Morningstar Farms and others were served and I tried to serve those at meals as well. I had a term for these products - ‘Linger Longer’. They sat in the pit of my stomach for days. They were, and I think still are, made from wheat gluten. Even 40 years ago I had trouble digesting those lumps of wheat. But my daughter loves the weiners in a can. Sometimes I’ll find them in a store and mail her some. I go for plain food like vegetables, and hope that guy brought some of his jello with mandarin oranges. Perhaps that other person brought some of the little mandarins that you have to peel. If nothing is edible for me, I’ll just go home and have a PB&J on gluten free bread. |
10. Human Right's Day Write anything you wish about this. Human Rights Day On my way to a meeting today I saw a yellow sticky note on the sidewalk. In pencil someone wrote: ‘nobody cares about this person’ and there was an arrow pointing up. I had to pick it up and think about this. How sad I would be if someone put this in my mailbox. Or in my locker if I was a teenager. Or on my car. Every human, male or female, and I believe there are just two sexes, sorry all you that choose otherwise (you can have that belief if you wish), are entitled to be treated fairly and humanely. It is in the Bible. You can also find references to this concept in virtually every other world religion. It is known as the Golden Rule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I think that pretty much sums it up. |
9. National Pastry Day Write about an experience of eating pastries. What did you eat, with whom, etc? I love the Great British Baking Show. Oh my goodness the pastry and ‘bakes’ they can do. And all under a large white tent in the beautiful countryside of England. So far the most favorite thing I’ve seen baked is this wonderful cake called ‘Kek Lapis Sarawak’. It is truly a thing of beauty. https://sarawaktourism.com/story/legendary-layer-cake-from-borneo-was-featured-o... Someday I may try to tackle this work of art. Seems it was brought to Borneo back in the day. So here’s a challenge - find Borneo on a globe. The cake was introduced by the Dutch who settled there and baked for teatime. It shows how serious they are about their tea! When my husband and I first got together, he told me of this German wonder called stollen. We lived near Columbus, OH. At that time there were some German bakeries in the city. He said it was a tradition to have stollen for Christmas. So we bought a stollen. We ate the entire pastry that morning. It was wonderful. Of course, that was back before I discovered I am cursed with the dreaded ‘can’t eat anything containing wheat’ malady of gluten intolerance. We still bake a stollen every year around Christmas. Tradition. But now my hubby is cursed with the dreaded ‘I have to eat the entire pastry’ malady. I think baking is a lost art. No one seems to bake any more. When we were in Gardiner we started baking sour dough bread. Again, this was before the gluten problem reared its ugly head. We sent away to King Arthur flour for this sour dough starter. It is from a strain over 200 years old they said. So you get this little bottle of stuff, feed it, and keep it going with water and flour forever if you wish. We had the most amazing bread from this sour dough starter. We made bread and waffles. I remember the wonderful sour taste. I took bread to share at the motel. I took bread to potluck at church. We loved that bread. Then one time after we moved here to Roundup somehow the starter got ruined. I’m not sure what happened but I opened the bowl to feed the mix and was greeted with this moldy, smelly mess. This starter we had lovingly catered to for over 8 years had died. So at that point we gave up the idea of baking bread. I can’t eat it anymore, and my hubby now rarely does either. But something I do bake is cookies and quick breads and other such things. Brownies, lemon bars, banana bread , chocolate chip cookies , oatmeal cookies, gingerbread, corn bread, biscuits, and all this from scratch. Every now and again I’ll do a pie and a real layer cake . No mixes - all from recipes. Nothing like the smell of something baked to fill your house. They just cannot get that smell in an air freshener. |
8. Brownie Day There are many types of brownies: Fudgy, cakey, 'special', with or without nuts, etc... Tell us something about brownies. I have a great brownie recipe. It takes 4 eggs , 2 sticks of butter, cocoa and chocolate chips. Lots of sugar. What harm can come of lots of butter, sugar and eggs? And then you cook the sugar and butter for a time. Wonderful. I got this recipe from the King Arthur flour company. I don’t think anything made from a box mix are worthy of the name brownie. They taste artificial. Sure they are cheap and easy. But let’s talk about that for a moment. Do you want to be considered cheap and easy? Why buy cheap clothes? Isn’t it better to buy the best you can afford? If you take care of your clothes, they will last for years. That way you won’t have to buy new clothes all the time. A decent coat will last for years. Decent jeans will last for years. Decent shirts and sweaters will last for years. Yes they will! You have been snookered into buying junk from the junk stores or online dealers. Junk from China that falls apart. And don’t get me started with junk shoes and boots that fall apart. We see them all the time at the thrift store. Junky shoes and boots. Buy leather. Yes, I’m sorry leather. Plastic shoes are not good for your feet. Leather breathes. Natural products are best. Wool, alpaca, linen, cotton, leather, products from nature. Okay, that is my speech from the ‘soap box’, as they say. I know there are blondies, which are nothing more than yellow cookies, but some seem to consider brownies without chocolate. But I think a good brownie has to be something near to fudge. Not cake. And by all means it has to be chocolate. Find a good recipe. And eat a really good brownie. Make a batch. Then eat one. Freeze the rest. Or give them away. But enjoy them. Life is short! Bake brownies! |
Dec 6. Marooned Without a Compass Day! So where are you and what are you going to do? Look for the sun. It rises in the east and sets in the west. So if you can find it, then you’ll know where you are headed. Follow that river, it usually leads to a town, since most towns settled by water. And by a river, especially in the west, trees often grow. If you are high, go lower. And if you are low, go higher. Then as I thought of a compass, there is no moral compass these days. The sky is the limit. But there are rules, folks. There always have been rules. Ever since creation there have been rules. And what about those in the world now with no moral compass? Seems like a lot of people think they can do whatever they want, no worries about consequences. Which once again takes us back to rules. Rules are here for our protection. Without them, the world would spin off into chaos. The planets have orbits, they spin in those orbits. Rules. We have gravity to keep us on our planet. Rules. We have traffic laws to keep us in our lane. Rules. We aren’t allowed to murder each other. Rules. You shouldn’t be allowed to do whatever you want. There are reasons for not murdering someone just because the person is a different color or looks at you weird or cuts you off in traffic. There are reasons you shouldn’t drive on the wrong side of the road or pass on a curve or on a hill. Where would we be as a society if everyone disobeyed the rules? Chaos and confusion. But soon there would be someone to calm the mob, take charge, tell us to buck up and work together and defeat the enemy among us. Whoops, sounds a little like some of the evil rulers we’ve seen in the recent past. Right now we have an evil ruler among us. But this ruler is not someone we can see. It is a vile little biological ruler. One that can take down a human without blinking an eye. It doesn’t care what color you are, where you live, how much money you have, or how old you are. It does not play by the rules we all hold dear. It is threatening to topple countries and pit neighbor against neighbor. So until we have the magic bullet to send this dictator away, we need to follow the rules. Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. |
Dec 5. Bonfire Night! Tell us about an evening around a bonfire. I don’t think I ever had an evening around a bonfire. But if I could, I would want it to be a nice one. One with hot dogs on sticks, s’mores, cowboy coffee and lots of dry wood that would crackle and send sparks into the inky black night. You would sit and roast your front like the hot dogs then have to turn and roast your rear for a time. The fire would burn down into some nice coals and then you could take out the potatoes you put into the fire about an hour ago. They should be done by now. I got to thinking of another kind of bonfire - book burning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning And what about the book ‘Fahrenheit 451’? The title is the temperature at which paper catches fire and burns. The main character, Guy Montag, is a fireman. He burns books. "The Fireman”, the original idea for ‘Fahrenheit 451’, was written in the basement of UCLA's Powell Library on a typewriter that Ray Bradbury rented for a fee of ten cents per half hour. The first draft was 25,000 words long and was completed in nine days. So no more excuses folks! If Bradbury can write a story as good as that on a rented typewriter in a library, and pay by the hour, and do it in nine days, get off your tush! You have a computer, you have a pen and paper at least. Write On! Queen Norma Jean |
Dec 4. Waiting for the Barbarians Day! Ok, tell us what you're up to and how you are preparing. Am I a prepper? Or as I have found on the internet - when SHTF. Well, no, not really. I don’t have a year’s worth of food. At my age, as the joke goes, it’s a dicey proposition to buy green bananas. We do have at least two or three months of toilet paper on hand. Why? Because some yo-yos have decided it is a hot commodity in these uncertain times, So we buy t.p. when we can. Hubby always has a back-up to a back-up. He’s always been this way. Me? Not so much. Never was that way. If he opens a new jar of peanut butter, there had better be three waiting on the shelf. In my previous life I would always wait until there was one more spread in the bottom to buy a new jar. So I am learning his ways. One group I thought of when I read the prompt were the Mormons. They believe in emergency preparedness. A three month supply of food is their goal. I remember when I lived in Ohio and visited a neighbor’s home. I think they were Mormons. The thing I remember most was the fact that in the living room were shelves from floor to ceiling. On the shelves were boxes and cans of food. So much food. I hadn’t seen so much food outside of a grocery store. So I think you should have a plan in place for any emergency. You should have some food stored in case the food supply is compromised. Canning, freezing and drying are great ways to save food. During WWII there were victory gardens. Food was rationed, as was gas, clothes, sugar, shoes, and tires. I did a search on the internet: “While some food items were scarce, others did not require rationing, and Americans adjusted accordingly. "Red Stamp" rationing covered all meats, butter, fat, and oils, and with some exceptions, cheese. Each person was allowed a certain amount of points weekly with expiration dates to consider. "Blue Stamp" rationing covered canned, bottled, frozen fruits and vegetables, plus juices and dry beans, and such processed foods as soups, baby food and ketchup. Ration stamps became a kind of currency with each family being issued a "War Ration Book." Each stamp authorized a purchase of rationed goods in the quantity and time designated, and the book guaranteed each family its fair share of goods made scarce, thanks to the war.” At one point I had some ration books I found at a thrift store. Interesting to look at. Some still had the stamps attached. Would we be willing to subject ourselves to rationing in this day and age? I’m sure there were those who complained, who rebelled. I am sure there was a black market where you could get more ration stamps. But since we are so willing to wear masks now, and who thought we would be doing that when this whole virus fiasco started, we would probably go along with a rationing program. If it would involve food. And who doesn’t like to eat! |
Dec 3. National Roof Over Your Head Day! Tell us about the favorite room in your home. I guess my favorite ‘room’ is my home. I love my entire home. It is small, so every room is my favorite. We’ve been remodeling this small place to more reflect the period it was built, the turn of the 20th century. The previous owner tried hard to make the place more modern, so we’ve been undoing what she did. Not everything, mind you, just the woodwork and putting in decent windows. That type of renovation. Virginia Woolf had a theory that women needed a ‘room of their own’. She wrote an essay with that title arguing that women needed a place of their own, financial freedom and the ability to be their own person. It was written in 1929, an era when women were still considered under the thumb, so to speak, of the men in their lives. Per the Internet: “Woolf argues that a woman needs financial freedom so as to be able to control her own space and life—to be unhindered by interruptions and sacrifices—in order to gain intellectual freedom and therefore be able to write.” I think of the current rage of ‘She Sheds’. Those seem like an off-shoot of this idea. Space for women just to be themselves. If men can have those ‘man caves’, why not ‘She Sheds’! That reflects the current trend of everyone having their own private spaces in their homes. Huge homes with huge rooms, huge closets, every one has their own bathroom, everyone has another ‘play’ space. Ever watch those home improvement shows? Some of the closets are larger than my current bedroom. When I watch those shows, my first thought is “Who is cleaning all those bathrooms and bedrooms?” But then I thought, well, if they can afford those huge houses, then they can afford house cleaners. I grew up sharing a very small bedroom with my sister. There were five people in my family and we had one small bathroom. That was an adventure. It took some scheduling to make sure everyone got to school and work on time. But somehow we made it work. But one of the things you learn living in a small house is how to get along with each other. You are stuck with each other. You have to make it work. That reminds me of when hubby and I lived full-time in our 30 foot RV. We had only known each other about 3 years, weren’t yet married. We traveled for a few years, working at some jobs, and ended up in Montana. You find out soon how to get along with your partner in a tiny space. You live on top of each other, you work next to each other, you are together 24 hours a day. Culture shock for us both. So, my favorite room? My brain. |
Dec 2. Today is National Fritters Day! Write about your fave and if you haven't had fritters, would you like to try one? Fritters are nothing more than fried dough with a glaze. A doughnut. And who can resist anything fried? I guess apple fritters are the best. That goes along with yesterday’s prompt. So get your apple a day the fun way, in a fritter. Used as a noun. But then are hush puppies considered a fritter? The savory side of fried foods. What is the legal definition of a fritter? It is a cake, croquette, cutlette, or patty. So I guess you could go either way, sweet or savory. Then you can also ‘fritter’ the day away doing nothing. Kind of like puttering. It can be used as a verb. When this virus started to really affect the world and we all got the stay at home and hunker down order, everyone started frittering the days away. https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/fritter%20away%20time I know when I had to start staying awake til 2 AM during my paradoxical insomnia treatment, I became a champion of frittering away some time. I had to occupy myself for hours after all my daytime chores were done. Frittering the hours away waiting for 2 AM to arrive. I like multi-purpose words. Fritter. Queen Norma Jean |