Horrid Wonderful Treats From My Childhood.

SUMMARY: And sometimes adulthood.

Nope, no house posts for a while. So much for Every Day.

BUT MEANWHILE I ran across this fun post about childhood favorites that lose their luster and just had to write my response. Here:

Wow, my childhood in a nutshell!

We loved Wonder bread. Best thing about it was that we’d peel off the crust, break the white part into small pieces, and roll them into tiny hard balls of … white stuff. So much fun to eat that way. Although the slices were also great slathered with a super thick layer of peanut butter. I haven’t bought this bread in decades and intend to keep it that way.

Hostess cupcakes–astonishingly I still love an occasional package of the orange ones. Why? I don’t know, but I do. Good thing they have about 10,000 calories each so it makes it easy to justify not buying them except in a cupcake emergency.

Kool-Aid, YESSS!! We always had a container of green Kool-Aid in the family fridge. All the kids knew that we were the place to go to get a cold glass of green Kool-Aid. I kept it up after I moved out until I was about 23, by which time I was a full-on Mug RootBeer in stumpy glass bottles addict. The next time I got around to making the Kool-Aid…. ugh. Haven't made it in decades, I don't think.

Oreos–the only ones I can handle are the fudge-covered mint-filled ones. Those, I can suck down a container full in the blink of my tongue. So bad, so good.

Necco wafers: I still love them. Why? Not sure. Maybe they taste of childhood? I just about danced in circles around the retro-candy-brands store last week [I left my phone at home! So no photos!] when I saw that they carried them! (I had heard they’d been discontinued.) I went through the roll in a day. Maybe I’ll go back for another in a few weeks. Some things just can’t be explained.

Dearth of Blog Posts--

SUMMARY: --but--but--so much to say to myself, to keep notes on, to share photos of, not to mention the photo themes from assorted places on the web!

So pretty much I don't post anything.

As a stopgap, here are a few quickie shots from this week from my corner of San Jose, CA.

Last Saturday--Who puts candy stores like this in my nearby mall? WHO WHO WHO? WHY? It goes on and on like this, and worse! Lucky to have gotten out for under $20 and under 20,000 calories! Yikes!

Later Saturday--Zorro and Chip play The Stupid Tunnel Game. Plus, considering that I haven't had an actual functioning agility dog in a year and a half, I sure do have a lot still lying around instead of put away. (Including a pile of rotting tunnel sandbags & containers--)

Sunday-- Mom is ill. Modern technology comes to the rescue--camera-microphones in key places in the house and a wireless monitor, so when I'm over there on a Sunday morning and having Diet Cherry Coke^tm and brownies for breakfast, I'll know if she's trying to sneak up on me and tell me that that is NOT an appropriate breakfast, Young Lady! Plus, meanwhile, my screensaver shows a photo of all of us "kids" wearing tshirts that she gave us one Christmas many years ago.

Monday-- 106.9 F (41.6 C) in my yard around 3:00.  That's also about when what is now known as The Loma Fire breaks out on Loma Prieta peak. By 5:30, the mushroom cloud has spread eastward across the south valley. Although that's about 12 miles from my house, I can see this clearly and also the flames at night. (As of last night, it had over 2,000 fire personnel working to contain it, had consumed almost 7 square miles (18 sq. km), and was anticipated to be contained by sometime this coming Monday. Contained, not out. I can smell the smoke. I can cough on the smoke.

Tuesday-- The story here, among those who have a prime view, is still the Loma Fire. I refuse to use a tripod, but still can clearly see flames and their glow in the thick, drought-fed smoke in the distance.

Wednesday--Don't let Chip pull the wool over your eyes, all innocent and pushing his Kong Wobbler food dispenser around like a neat and tidy dog--half an hour before the carpet wore a mantle of crumbled dirt clods and chewed-up sticks, and it will again half an hour from now. And WHO with dogs would have carpet that color ANYWAY?!

Thursday--I love my kitchen clock. Still makes me smile, 15 years after I found it at an art & wine show. Can you see how the second hand is like a little red corkscrew? Happy happy happy time!

Yesterday (Friday)-- Us iz bored, Human Mom? Nooooo! No pay usses no mind, H.M., go on work your computer on, on couch, iz OK.

Today--2nd annual Martial Cottle Park Harvest Festival. Walking distance behind my house. How cool is that?!

And WHO KNOWS what tomorrow will bring?! Maybe a movie? Some popcorn? Dog antics? Maybe even dog TRAINING? Sleeping? Good thing I have a camera to record it all!

Happy Valentine's Day

SUMMARY: I heart my dog heads.

Candy heart images made using the Acme Heart Maker

Salmagundi

SUMMARY: View and invasives, shoes, chairs, ribbons, peeps, oh my.

I forgot to mention yesterday (really?! with all that text I didn't mention something?!) that, although USDAA is now too cheap to supply team or grand prix Qualifying and placement ribbons, medals, or pins any more, Haute Dawgs did provide some. May I present our extra-long, extra-large ribbons for: Performance Team 2nd Place, Performance Grand Prix 4th Place, and Perf. Tournament Master Platinum:

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I hate shopping for shoes; it's hard to find something that looks like I want to wear them, and when I do, they usually don't fit. I was happy, as I reported two weeks ago, when I was able to quickly find a new pair of agility shoes very quickly in the third store I went into.

However, my normal everyday shoes were also a disaster--actually the uppers were fine, but the manufacturer I've been wearing for several years has greatly cheapened the shoes and both, although fairly new, had holes in the soles already. I dropped in to REI with my agility/movies friend (Sparkle's Human Mom) after seeing Hunger Games last week, and while I browsed for everyday shoes, she scoured the discount rack and found a pair of agility shoes that looked pretty good. She tried them on, thought they were OK, but thought they'd fit me better (she wears a  slightly larger size). So, while waiting for the Shoe Person to bring me my shoes, I tried them on. Wow! They were instantly comfortable, and so LIGHT! I felt barefoot yet more stable and secure! How could I resist half price on a perfect pair of shoes? And so they came home with me.

I switched between the pairs this weekend, and all went well with both. Happy agility camper--er, runner.

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I also hate shopping for office chairs. My first real office chair I happened on by accident after shopping and shopping--it was on clearance at some random store, but 7 or 8 years ago its hydraulic lift stopped lifting, so I was left sitting about 10 inches above the floor and raising my hands over my head to get to the keyboard. I looked and looked for one I liked, finally found a decent one at one of those resellers of used office furniture. But its arms started wiggling fairly quickly and required constant tightening, then one of the bolts broke, then another one stripped out about a year ago, then the last one's hole stripped out, and I was left with an armless chair as reported earlier. In agility, as Jim Basic says, "armless is harmless," but in office chairs, especially with my back and knees, I need those arms.

I lucked out--in March, Office Depot was having a mongo chair sale, all of them at great discounts. I went on over and looked at about 3 dozen chairs. Exactly one was even close to what I wanted, and it actually felt pretty good. Would've liked it upholstered rather than just mesh, but comfortable, supportive,  fully adjustable, and available without spending weeks at dozens of stores were high on my list of key features, so I ordered one and it arrived last week. Some assembly was required, and although I bruised my hand, torqued my thumb, and got a blood blister on my palm trying to "press the casters into the holes at the end of each leg," for the most part it went smoothly.

Anyone need a perfectly good office chair with no arms? Or think they can figure out how to attach the arms? It's yours. (See link to previous post for photo.)
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About a week ago: A stunning crystal-clear day after wind and a little rain, looking west at Mount Hamilton (if you click this photo to see a larger version, you can just make out the observatory); the field is still mostly green:

This morning, looking south across the same field--guess the mustard and oxalis have decided that it's finally really spring. They make even the neighbor's beautiful purple lilacs fizzle. The yellow fields are something else to see, but they are highly invasive nonnatives that crowd out native plants. Oh, and it's been warmish with no rain for several days, so although these hills are much closer than Mount Ham, you can tell the difference in the air quality.

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Wait--how long have these peeps been on this shelf anyway?

Treasures!

SUMMARY: Photos from the weekend.

Many people bring cakes when their dogs finish a major title. I thought that this was a great idea for Gypsy's CPE championship (C-ATCH), earned at WAG with a Jackpot run.

Might have to steal that idea if there's time for me to get them this week-- oh, wow, $130 for a 5-lb bag, plus $25 shipping and $20 expedited delivery to get them by next weekend. Maybe not. But if I loved my friends enough to pay $35/pound for M&Ms, here's what they'd have looked like:

Guess my friends will have to satisfy themselves with looking at photos of our ribbons. Here are ours, minus our final Q and placements from the last run of the weekend. And the only photos of the Merle Girls from the weekend--Backsides of Dogs.

WAG had kind of a fun game. They handed out bingo cards to everyone, and you could use your run times (the numbers before and after the decimal point) to fill out the card. Plus they periodically pulled 2 more free numbers. Here's Tika's sheet--she got a lock on 32 and 33 right away, but we couldn't get 5 in a row.

We had to wait until the last dog had died, so to speak, Sunday evening, when everyone crowded around the bingo machine as they pulled more numbers until all the prizes had been awarded. I can't show you Boost's card; I had to turn it in because we won! A cool, custom-embroidered (purple and black) blanket.

Also Boost did well in the worker raffle again, picking up a Cold Stone Creamery gift card, a bag of dried fruit, and a $15 cert to come back to WAG sometime. She might not be good on course, but she's sure good at raffles and paper games.

I stopped on the way out of WAG's driveway to capture their signs. Fritz was Susan's first agility dog, a big sheltie, who could do no wrong and earned thousands of championships in several venues. They were competing back when Remington and Jake and I were still running. He died of cancer last year, but what a great life he led. The sign with his name is the 3rd one they've put up. The first two were stolen--jerks!--and they've put it up more securely each time. This last time, a lot of us at one trial did a secret gathering of funds and presented it to Susan and Dave to replace the sign once again. Hopefully it won't go away again.

Out on the freeway, a most glorious sunset held sway. I drove frantically looking for a place to get off the freeway and then to stop with a clear view of the sky and hopefuly something interesting in the foreground. Well, nothing interesting in the foreground and by the time I got here, the sunset was way past its peak. But still pretty impressive down near the horizon.

Thus the weekend faded to black.

Speaking of Food Treats--Favorite Holiday Sugar

SUMMARY: No-Cook Fondant recipe.

This is something my mom used to make, and my sister now often makes it at holiday time.

Apparently she's going to charge a lot for her labor costs.


It's actually pretty easy to make, very tasty, and very pretty if done the fancy way. And no cooking!

1/3 cup soft butter
1/3 cup light Karo syrup
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla or your favorite flavoring--I prefer peppermint (might not need as much as a tsp)
3 and 1/2 cups (1 lb) sifted confectioner's sugar
optional: one or two different food colorings; for xmas, green and red, for instance

1. Blend butter, syrup, salt, and flavoring in large mixing bowl.
2. Add sifted confctioner's sugar all at once. Mix first with a spoon and then with hands, kneading in the dry ingredients.
3. Turn onto a board and continue kneading until mixture is well blended and smooth (you can use more powdered sugar on the board or your hands to keep from sticking if needed).
4. Pick your option:

• Roll into a long roll about 1" in diameter, slice into 1/2" pieces, store in layers of waxed paper in your favorite container.
• Divide in half. Color each half a different color (or leave one half white). Form each into a loaf shape and roll out into a long, narrow rectangle (used powdered sugar on the rolling pin and board to keep from sticking). Try to make the two halves of equal width and length, about 1/8" thick. Place on on top of the other. Roll together so you have a long tube about 1" in diameter. Slice into 1/2" pieces and you have little pinwheels of candy. Store in layers of waxed paper in your favorite container. Tip: After rolling, make sure it's fairly round and then chill before cutting to keep it from smooshing as much. But it still tastes good smooshed (as in the following photos).
• Shape into a patty about 1" thick. Chill. Serve on a plate with a knife and let people pick their own poison size. (Can also color it or decorate with sprinkles.)

Makes about 1.5 pounds candy. Store in a cool place.