Wednesday Afternoon...

   I will be offline for a few days spending time with friends and family.
     The 'Feast of Trumpets' begins tonight.
Among other things it symbolizes redemption and the awakening of those asleep in death and those who sleep through this life as well!

    “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD,

when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah,

 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke,

 though I was their husband, declares the LORD. 

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: 

I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. 

And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 

And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother,

 saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me,

 from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD.

For I will forgive their iniquity, 

and I will remember their sin no more.”
(from Jeremiah 31)

     " The Lord kills and brings to life;
he brings down to the grave and raises up.
 The Lord will judge the ends of the earth;
he will give strength to his king
 and exalt the horn of his Anointed .”
(from 2nd Samuel)

I have updated my other blogs as well.

Early American Cooking

When I was looking through the James Townsend and Sons catalog for gloves, ink and flint that I wanted to purchase, I thought that the site might be something I could blog about and share with you.
The ink and flint are for teaching purposes as I want to teach the little ones how to write using  the Palmer method  and the flint is for teaching how to make a camp fire the hard way, just in case.

Girl Scout blogger here!

 Crachit and Scrooge

I like fingerless gloves for working on cold days and for doing my very credible Bob Cratchit impersonation.

No,they don't pay me. They don't know I exist! But I know about them and love the site.
Jas. Townsend and Sons sell items from the 18th century. You know, the 1700's.
I think they are big with people who are historical re-enactors,Revolutionary War buffs, etc.
There is a lot on their site you can use today.
They also do videos about 18th century cooking. Everything is authentic, down to the music they use for them.
Did you know that Colonials of that time invented deep fried onion rings and fried apple pie?
They did!

Here are the onion rings.
Oh yum.




I've written out the recipe for you:

John Mollards Onion Rings

 Onions sliced into  1/2   inch rings
Cooking oil deep enough to fry the rings
Batter:
3 eggs well beaten
5 T. Cream
dash salt and pinch pepper
1/4 cup flour
4 ounces finely grated Parmesan cheese

Dip the rings into the batter  and then place in the hot oil.
Fry until golden brown on one side, then turn and fry the other side.
Serve with mustard mixed into melted butter or just plain with or without salt.

Happy First Day of Fall!

End of the Week

In my previous post I failed to mention that Booth Tarkington won the Pulitzer prize for
several of his novels, The Magnificent Ambersons being one of them.
 You can find the book online here at Project Gutenberg.  There it can be downloaded as an ebook.

 Personally I would rather own a copy because I value a library in the home. Books are very valuable to me.
The movie version, with changed ending,  is also available.
 It was nominated for four Academy Awards and with a stellar cast including Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton, Anne Baxter and Agnes Moorehead its no big surprise at all. 
It is regarded as one of the finest films ever made in the United States.

Our weather has been back and forth with showers and sunshine and cool temperatures in the day and low temperatures at night enabling you to see your breath!  It is lovely , breezy and cool today.
Most of the summer people have left their summer houses for the year as another autumn closes in.

Time to pick up the little from her school bus .
have a wonderful weekend everyone.

Author Suggestion

I would like to make this a regular feature..
If you have not read Booth Tarkington  you may enjoy trying. I especially loved his novel 'Seventeen' which satirizes first love in a teenagers life.
This is an excerpt from the Ambersons providing a look into the past.

 The Magnificent Ambersons
by Booth Tarkington

"Major Amberson had “made a fortune” in 1873, when

other people were losing fortunes, and the magnificence of the Ambersons began then. Magnificence, like the size of a fortune, is always comparative, as even Magnificent Lorenzo may now perceive, if he has happened to haunt New York in 1916; and the Ambersons were magnificent in their day and place. Their splendour lasted throughout all the years that saw their Midland town spread and darken into a city, but reached its topmost during the period when every prosperous family with children kept a Newfoundland dog.

In that town, in those days, all the women who wore silk or velvet knew all the other women who wore silk or velvet, and when there was a new purchase of sealskin, sick people were got to windows to see it go by. Trotters were out, in the winter afternoons, racing light sleighs on National Avenue and Tennessee Street; everybody recognized both the trotters and the drivers; and again knew them as well on summer evenings, when slim buggies whizzed by in renewals of the snow-time rivalry. For that matter, everybody knew everybody else’s family horse-and-carriage, could identify such a silhouette half a mile down the street, and thereby was sure who was going to market, or to a reception, or coming home from office or store to noon dinner or evening supper.

During the earlier years of this period, elegance of personal appearance was believed to rest more upon the texture of garments than upon their shaping. A silk dress needed no remodelling when it was a year or so old; it remained distinguished by merely remaining silk. Old men and governors wore broadcloth; “full dress” was broadcloth with “doeskin” trousers; and there were seen men of all ages to whom a hat meant only that rigid, tall silk thing known to impudence as a “stove-pipe.” In town and country these men would wear no other hat, and, without self-consciousness, they went rowing in such hats.

Shifting fashions of shape replaced aristocracy of texture: dressmakers, shoemakers, hatmakers, and tailors, increasing in cunning and in power, found means to make new clothes old. The long contagion of the “Derby” hat arrived: one season the crown of this hat would be a bucket; the next it would be a spoon. Every house still kept its bootjack, but high-topped boots gave way to shoes and “congress gaiters”; and these were played through fashions that shaped them now with toes like box-ends and now with toes like the prows of racing shells."
(excerpt provided for educational purposes only)

Let me know what you think please?

Candy Box

Sunday is the Miss America pageant.
Will you watch it?   I just am not interested at all.
My father, of blessed memory, called it a 'meat market' and said women should not be judged on such silly standards.

In February I usually post this as a memorial to my father. I forgot this year but its never too late. 
Here it is:

 My father was a romantic.

He loved my mother dearly and he loved her mother, who lived with us most of my life, very much also just as he had loved his own.
He showed such a great deal of respect for her and for his own parents and as my maternal Grandmother said.."He is as good to me as 20 other sons".
She lived with us my whole life and never paid for anything herself. My father would not allow her to have to pay her own way.

He was a scientist,vice president and chief chemist of a well known chemical company, who for many good  reasons, later opened a soda fountain/ice cream shop that eventually became a commercial stationers store in a tiny town, selling stationary to  businesses and  office supplies to walk in customers.

Later on, he took a beating money wise from malls and the new mega  stationers like Staples who drove small business owners out of business and literally all but destroyed small town  downtown shopping.
 But he was honest to a fault in all his dealings, his customers loved him, his repuation was good and he was ever the romantic.

Sometimes for no reason at all he would bring home boxes of candy to my mother, grandmother and me after work.

 I  remember him walking home without his brand new coat one frigid night because he had given it to  a poor man.   "Its only a block walk", he had said to my mother--- the candy tucked under his arm. "I don't need a new coat when someone else has none."
Without exaggeration, that was who my father was.

We lived in a tall. narrow Victorian home on a hill over looking our whole street which was set  one block back from the  little main street of town.  That house was a child's dream of nooks and crannies, with heavy wooden real, actual hurricane shutters on the windows.
My grandmother and I had rooms that shared one very long house wide closet that had separate doors in our individual rooms.  When I knew she was in there I would open my side and peak around and wave down  its length at her.  What fun I had!

 In my grandmother's side of that closet, on a shelf , were a few frilly old candy boxes filled with her beautiful crochet work (she made filet crochet for slips, camisoles, hankies and doilies that said, 'cake' and 'bread'), news clippings of   friends deaths, births of grandchildren, marriages, cards from holidays,  yellowed news of her oldest son serving in North Africa and France during WWII, mementos and tiny souvenirs.

One such box was used to house her "good gloves" and one held "my good scarves".
 I once asked her why she saved all those boxes. "Oh, " she said, "its a shame to waste things".     "Yes", I said, "but you could fit this all in one or two big hat boxes".
She looked at me with those sparkling gray eyes , one of them now blind and said , "But there is so much love in these boxes".
I knew what she meant.
( Originally posted March 6, 2006)
Have a lovely weekend my friends.

 

Tuesday 4

Hello friends.
Time for Toni's meme.........

The old Stillwater General Store
 in Stillwater, New Jersey

1. What's the oddest thing you've ever returned?  I really don't think I ever returned anything odd at all, just normal stuff really.

2. Do you return things you don't like or just keep them? It depends on the item.  I will see if anyone else can use it first.  If it is cheap enough I save it until someone does need it or I find use for it.  Expensive things get returned.

3. What's the largest item you've ever returned?   I can't recall anything really large.  Mostly I have returned clothing that was too large/small or had defects.

4. Have you ever returned a dress/outfit you wore to a special occasion?
 No I would not like that.

The weather here is indicating an early fall. Skies are becoming more grey, winds are picking up, birds are quiet or gone south already.
Some trees are turning color and dropping leaves already.
We have had some thunderstorms and as fall edges its way in we are thinking about the gales and nor'easters that come with it.

How is your Tuesday so far?

Joan Hickson as Miss Marple

Joan Hickson as the beloved  Miss Marple

People talk  quite a bit about their favorite Miss Marple and I was always of the opinion that I like  them all just the same. Lately, however,  I have decided that I do indeed have a favorite.
Joan Hickson seems to embody what my mind's eye sees when I read Agatha Christie's Miss Marple stories so I will have to say she is my favorite.
She reminds me of my grandmother, of blessed memory, in demeanor and personality. Always well turned out but with a home spun style. Her mind and wit as sharp as a tack.

Want to watch along with me? That would be nice but be sure to expand the screen.

This episode is a favorite:




 

Liebster ( not Lobster)

 I've been asked to do the Liebster  project by  our friends  Kim, Pam and Susan.
Thank you ladies!

 I have done this twice in the past and nominated a few people at that time so I will bend the rules and just do the questions and facts part and leave the challenge open to anyone who wants to join in.    
 Otherwise I might be asking the same people over again.

Liebster is given to bloggers with less than 200 followers.

 It is fun to answer the questions and a little challenge to come up with interesting facts about yourself so consider chiming in with your answers!

Official Rules:

If you have been nominated for The Liebster Award AND YOU CHOOSE  TO ACCEPT IT, write a blog post about the Liebster award in which you:

1. thank the person who nominated you, and post a link to their blog on your blog.

2. display the award on your blog — by including it in your post and/or displaying it using a “widget” or a “gadget”. (Note that the best way to do this is to save the image to your own computer and then upload it to your blog post.)

3. answer 11 questions about yourself, which will be provided to you by the person who nominated you.

4. provide 11 random facts about yourself.

5. nominate 5 – 11 blogs that you feel deserve the award, who have a less than 1000 followers. (Note that you can always ask the blog owner this since not all blogs display a widget that lets the readers know this information!)

6. create a new list of questions for the blogger to answer.

7. list these rules in your post (You can copy and paste from here.) Once you have written and published it, you then have to:

8. Inform the people/blogs that you nominated that they have been nominated for the Liebster award and provide a link for them to your post so that they can learn about it (they might not have ever heard of it!)

Kim's Questions:
   1. Where were you born?  New Jersey
   2. What was the last thing you splurged on for yourself?  Perfume.
   3. What is the biggest thing in life that you regret?  Getting married.
   4. Do you take after your mom or your dad?  Both. I have traits of both my parents.
   5. Do you follow politics?  Yes, but I think both parties are awful and very crooked.
   6. Are you a happy person?  Overall I am more happy than not!
   7. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? I would be more thoughtful.
   8. How old are you? (come on, you can do it!) No, can't do it. In America you are legally old at 40 and it can be a problem in looking for work when employers look at your social media,  etc.  I am old enough to vote!
   9. Have you figured out the meaning of life?   I think the bible explains it as growing in the image of God.
10. What’s your favorite meal to cook?   Beef with mushroom sauce over wild rice.
  11. Who makes you the happiest?  My kids

Pam's Questions:
1. What is your favorite way to relax?
With a cup of tea/coffee by the water at night.
2. Do you live in the vicinity of where you grew up?
 I live about 70 miles south of my hometown.
3. What is the best vacation you have been on?  Going to the Poconos in the fall.
4. If you could live life over, what's the 'one' thing you would change?
I would want to not have spinal problems and the decades of pain I have endured.
5. Are you a night owl or a lark?
Both actually but I prefer being a lark.
6. What is your all time favorite TV show?
 Whatever I like at the moment but nothing stands out over all. Right now I am enjoying Haven (Netflix)  and Pretty Little Liars
7. Do you prefer reading on a device or reading an actual book?
 Actual book. I have tons of them. But love the reader a friend gave me!
8. What is your favorite summer outing?   
Sitting by the bay, day or night!
9. Are you an animal lover, if so, what is your favorite animal?
I like dogs and cats.
10. What's your biggest pet peeve?  
Poor English such as 'could of' instead of could've for could have!

11. What was your favorite decade (50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, etc)? 
80's

Susan's Questions:

1.Have you met any of your blog friends?
No. I have never met anyone from the internet in person.
2.What is the best place you went for a vacation?
Prince Edward Island and Lake Placid.
3.Did you go to college?
  Yes, I did. 
4.How many siblings do you have?
I have a brother and a sister.
5.What are you reading right now?
 Elin Hilderbrand's  Beautiful Day.She writes about Nantucket and Tuckernuck Island.   I find the characters in this one not likable at all, sadly.
6.Do you have a hobby?
 Painting
7.Where would you like to go for your next vacation?
 Nova Scotia
8.What piece of furniture in your house do you like the best?
 My piano, if you can count that as furniture.
9.What is your favorite tv show?
  Haven right now.
10.If you could buy a new car, what would you get?
 Mustang
11.What is your favorite fruit?
 Pineapple 

11 Random Facts about Me:

1. I am a closet Hello Kitty fan.
2.   I enjoy old standards in music.
3.   I am a film noir fan.
4.   I like streets lit with gaslight lamps.
5.   Autumn is the time of the year that makes me feel refreshed.
6.   I was always very athletic.
7.  I always wear perfume.
8.   My hair can bleach very light in the sun, especially when I was a kid.
9.   I have a deep violet ring around the irises of my eyes.
10.  Spinal surgery added one inch to my height!
11.  I really like Greek food and Baklava is my favorite dessert.

11 Questions for You if you choose to do the challenge.

1. Were you ever a soap opera watcher?  Which?
(Days of Our Lives though not watching it now)
 2. Do you get excited easily or are you laid back?
( I am so laid back people have to poke me to see if I am alive)
 3. Can you swim?
(yes)
 4. Do you enjoy parties and gatherings?
(very much!)
 5. Is there any job/career you wish you had pursued other than what you did?
(teaching, though I did home school and actually taught Latin! whodathunkit?)
 6. Would you consider being mayor of your town or member of town counsel, etc?
(I was asked to run for mayor of my home town when I was 34.  I turned it down)
 7. What is the story behind your blog's title?
(I live in a cottage by the sea!)
 8.  Nature sounds or city sounds?
( both!)
 9.   Do you volunteer or wait to be asked?
(depends on the situation. )
10.  Do you have a favorite possession?
( a tie between my chime clock and my piano)
11. What does your name mean? What are it's origins?
(It is Grace in Hebrew)
 .

Tuesday 4

Tuesdays are Toni's  Meme day and I am participating today again.

#14 Labor Day Celebration Preferences

1. Holiday Shopping or Day at the Beach?   Either one is fine with me but usually stay
home as the tourists are just out in droves on the last day of the tourist season.

2. Lounging by the Pool or Picnic by the Lake?   either would be very nice.

3. Barbeque Cookout or Favorite Restaurant?   Either one is just fine!  It's the company that is important to me.

4. Flea Market or Football Game?   Is there football on Labor Day?
Flea market please but without the fleas if you please!

Thanks Toni. I always enjoy these.

In reality Labor day was spent quietly at home doing nothing until evening when the girls came to catch up on past years episodes of Pretty Little Liars.
I will be around to visit tomorrow.