Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Linda Lou's Kansas Farm Woman Cinnamon Rolls

Blogfaddah Harvey wanted this recipe. Don't nobody blame me if his, or hers, belly drags on the ground. These things are a once per year recipe.

Two tsp sugar, one half cup lukewarm water, one package yeast. any cook knows the drill, dissolve sugar in water, add yeast, dissolve. Let stand ten minutes.
Scald one and one half cups milk, add one half cup sugar and one half tsp salt. Cool.
Add two beaten eggs, , three cups all purpose flour, yeast mixture and three more cups flour.
Knead a little. (May need to add a little more flour)
Cover and let rise for twenty minutes.
Knead on lightly floured board until dough springs back when punched with finger.
Let rise until doubled, about an hour.
Roll out and spread with eight ounces of soft margarine or butter.
Add three cups brown sugar and eight tsp cinnamon.
Roll in long roll, cut in one inch slices. Twirl the slices into rolls. Place in nine by twelve by two inch cake pan.
Let rise until doubled.
Bake at 350 degrees F for twenty to twenty five minutes.
Flip out of pan.

Eat.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

A Recipe For Army Wife, Toddler Mom

My pal Army Wife, Toddler Mom is asking for baked goods recipes, cookies, and suchlike.

We have a standby here that we try to never be without. It's her Grandma Hagen's Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. Linda Lou eats six of these cookies a day as a meal and has lost a WHOLE LOT of weight on this diet. Oddly this started before she retired and her diet consisted of six oatmeal raisin cookies and a Sonic double cheeseburger and tater tots each workday. I make no guarantee that anyone else will lose weight on this diet but it worked for her.

At any rate here is the recipe...Grandma Hagen's Oatmeal Raisin Cookies:

Two sticks margarine, the cheap stuff
Two Eggs
One cup sugar
Two cups flour (all purpose, not self rising)
One tsp baking soda
One tsp Cinnamon
One half tsp allspice
one half tsp nutmeg
Pinch salt (new salt, not an old salt like Harvey)
Two Cups quick oats
One cup cooked raisins (note cook raisins in a small pan with water. Bring to a rolling boil, turn off heat)
five tsp raisin juice. (Raisin juice is the the water the raisins boiled in.)

Soften margarine. Linda Lou puts the margarine on top of the stove, in the back where the over vent is. She has it unwrapped, in the mixer bowl. This is first, she does everything else while the oven preheats.

Blend in sugar and eggs.

Blend or sift flour, soda, spices and salt.

Add flour, oatmeal, raisins and juice.

Mix until the dough forms a ball. (If you don't have a mixer use a stout spoon, this dough is thick. Until we got a mixer I had one arm like Popeye)

Spoon onto lightly greased cookie sheet. (Linda Lou squirts the cookie sheet all over with Pam and then wipes the excess off with a clean paper towel.)

Bake at 350F for ten to twelve minutes.

Did I mention that Linda Lou lost a lot of weight eating six of these cookies a day?

Sunday, November 26, 2006

Anvil Al Memorial Birthday Shoot





Saturday was another cowboy action shoot and also it was Anvil Al's Birthday. His wife and a couple of confederates cooked up a mountain of brisket and beans, potato salad and sundries to celebrate.

I think Anvil Al ought to have a birthday on the second Sunday and last Saturday of every month. I have no pictures of the actual eating, this is after all, a G rated Blog. Had y'all been there you would know why we have those bandannas around our necks.

The shooting was going along nicely, right up until I "missed the bucket", again. The residual damage from the stroke I had made the ring and little fingers of my right hand numb and weak. Those are the fingers I use most when reholstering a shootin' iron. Ooops! I was going along in my first clean stage of the shoot and then, all of a sudden there was a six shooter on the floor of the Sportin' House. Fortunately I only seem to drop the iron when reholstering so it's only a stage disqualification. Had the gun been loaded it would have been a match DQ.

Anyway I was my usual slow but semi-accurate self, shooting black powder and putting up clouds of gun smoke, the barbecue beans, later, added more smoke.

The smoothing out of my shotgun chambers helps a lot, without that stage DQ I would have been in the middle, someplace, insead of next to the last. It doesn't matter all that much where I place, I'm never going to be a champ at this. The champs have better nerves and reflexes than I do. Cowboy action is just plain fun, no matter where I place and the shooting is okay practice. So what if my main defense revolver is a double action? Shooting is shooting. Since most bad guys never practice, even at my worst I'm better than they are. Cowboy action has certainly helped my shotgun shooting, my buckshot loads don't kick near as much as those black powder cowboy action loads.

Anyhow, the weather was near-perfect, cool and cloudy in the morning, clear and warmer by the time the shoot was over. I like shooting black powder when it is cloudy and humid, it makes more smoke. It's harder to shoot fast, though, not only does the smoke hide the targets but the flame and sparks from the gun going' off is distracting. Instead of swinging to the next target and searching for the front sight I'm watching the flames.

Oh well, good company, good food and a pretty nice day.

Friday, November 24, 2006

The Return Of The Prodigal Puppy



Linda Lou and I were sleeping the sleep of the just, the sleep of only those with a good conscience when the phone rang. It was the vet's offices telling me that someone had found Eddie. Well, we dressed fast and headed out.and, sure enough, there he was, at a "resort" and marina about three miles off. Maybe a mile and a half as the crow flies, not being a crow I'm not positive. At any rate we drove among the house trailers and the feller that found him was outside with him. Eddie was glad to see us.

As soon as I opened the car door, Eddie jumped in. We both got a ton of puppy kisses and Ming The Merciless, peas be unto her, barked hysterically at Larry. Eddie is fine, skinny as a rail and covered in ticks. He's been eating his little head off and has had a bath with flea and tick soap.

It's too bad he wasn't found yesterday, he would have enjoyed the cooking of the turkey breast. He got a hunk of turkey today, though. I have decided to leave his food dish down all the time until Monday and let him get filled up good and then go back to the housebreaking routine.

You might guess that Linda Lou is really happy.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Who Knew She Is Muslim?



I am not sure what adjustments we are going to have to make in our household routine but we just discovered that Ming The Merciless is a Muslim dog. I guess I will have to write to "Ask_The_Ayatollah.com" or "Query_The_Q'ran".org" or somesuch to figure out what to do.

At any rate her Muslim background may explain why she bites my fingers when I give her a treat, she's so small that's the best she can do with her Jihad.

One might wonder how we discovered that Ming is Muslim, let me explain...
I was eating dinner and shaking rather more than usual and dropped some peas. Ming snatched them up before they had a chance to bounce or roll, ate every one and begged for more. This prooves she is Muslim, because..............

Peas Be Unto Her.

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

High Finance

I just saw on Drudge that Google stock is up to $500.00 a share. Now I don't understand much about finance, I barely understand lunch money. I am curious, though. I use Firefox and it has Google connections. It's free. I have a G-mail account. It's free. I regularly Google stuff on line when I want to figure out the answer to(mostly) unimportant questions. It's free. Okay, there are a few little ads that I never look at.

So, here is my question... Here is a business giving away it's product and services and each individual share is worth FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS! What does a shareholder get? How in the world does a company that gives it's service away make a profit to the stockholders?

I don't understand, am I an idiot or do folks with disposable income just enjoy throwing it away?

Didn't we just go through this same thing at the end of the Clinton Administration with the bursting of the Great Dot Com Bubble?

Update: in comments my Pal, Teresa, who is pretty smart even if she's some kind of Yankee, says that Google makes bazillions of bucks from advertisors. Okay, I believe it but then I must ask, who reads the ads? I read some at first but quit because when they're ads claiming to have what I'm looking for I always managed to find it cheaper. So, I never read the ads.

Granted I might be just a little unusual but I'm certainly not unique. I don't know for sure but somebody, the advertisors or the stockholders will eventually get sc, um, oh well, I just hope they're all getting kissed.

Monday, November 20, 2006

New Blog!

Well, my pal Army Wife, Toddler Mom has a new kid, a blog-daughter. It's a good thing AWTM lives in Arkansas because this virtual daughter is already in her twenties.
Anyhow you can find KD over at her blog, The Life Of The Wife.

While we wait for his return we might all take turns worrying and praying so that KD can maybe take a two minute break every once in a while.

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Duke Of Trousers





A while back I was looking over the classified ads on the SASS Wire, the cowboy action bulletin board, and noticed that a Pard was selling some Horsefly pants. No, not pants for a horsefly, that is just the brand name. The guy who made these is retired now but was quite well known for the quality of his work.



Anyhow, the guns and holsters are only a small part of the expense involved in the sport of Cowboy Action Shooting, the "right" clothes are real expensive. That shirt I have on in that picture is forty-bucks and not even perma press.

So, when I saw four pairs of these pants for ten bucks a pair I sprained a finger typing "I'll take 'em" and posting it. Now, a minor difficulty is that I didn't NEED four pairs of button fly, no belt loop, three pocket pants, iron every time you walk past pants. There are those who are really into the costume part of the sport, I'm really just there for the noise and stinky black powder smoke but, for a few days I was the Pants King of Lake Tawokonie. As luck would have it, though, another Pard, out California way wanted to buy those pants, too. So I sold him two pair and instead of the Pants King I am merely the Trouser Duke.

If anyone cares this is the first pair of green trousers I've had since back when I wore Uncle's Suit.



Thursday, November 16, 2006

Eddie Didn't Come Home

Well, we've lost another puppie. I took Eddie out to pee the other night and then Ming came out and they went off to sniff around. Eddie didn't come home and searching proved useless.

Owl? Coyote? Mean people? Who knows. Foo.

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Veteran's Day

Eighty-eight years ago the lights came on in Europe after four years of Hell on Earth. No one knew then that it was the beginning of the end of Europe's dominance of the globe.

Just as Decoration Day morphed into Memorial Day, Armistice Day turned into Veteran's Day. A day to remember not just the heroes, the Chesty Pullers and Silent Lew Walts, the Manila John Basilones and the Audie Murphys, but the other guys like me, and now gals, who put on Uncle's suit and did what they were told in unglamorous jobs.

I don't often think about my time in the Service, life is in the way. Every once in a while, though, I think back. I don't remember the lack of sleep and the bad food, I don't think of the hours of boredom or the moments of terror.

Instead I remember that once I stood with heroes.

Friday, November 10, 2006

Two Anniversaries.

Two anniversaries today. Two hundred and thirty-one years ago the Continental Congress created two battalions of Marines.

Fast forward a little bit and my then-fiance, Linda Lou wanted us to marry on a day I couldn't forget. So, November tenth. Semper Fi, twice.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Pictures






By popular demand, puppy photos! Don't nobody dare tell me that Quality Weenie isn't popular.

In other news the Donks seem to have got some new law on the books. It seems to be against the rules to stand in the driveway of the polling place with a gun and a sign "No Donks!" Foo. I never have any fun.

Anybody know how Frank J is doing with his ASP Baton?

Monday, November 06, 2006

Vote

Just a note on this laptop...vote. I know a lot of conservatives are disgruntled, I have my problems with the bunch running the show in DC. I'm still going to pull the straight Republican Ticket.

Of course, it is easier for me, there are very few RINOs running here in Texas. Still, even a RINO will prevent a Speaker Pelosi. A RINO will help prevent a Donk taking our tax cuts away and, most importantly, will keep up the fight against Islamic terrorism. Nor should we forget judges.

It is somewhat easier for me, too, because I knew all along that Dubya is not, and has not been, a classic conservative. I knew that from the time I met him when he was first running for Governor of Texas. That was during my big political career when I was a Republican Precinct Chairman.

So, vote. Hold your nose if you must, just vote. Don't forget, the polls are supposed to be crowded this year so we Rupublicans vote Tuesday and the Donks vote Wednesday.

Friday, November 03, 2006

My Computer Bit The Dust.

My computer has bitten the dust. I am online only due to this miserable little laptop that is a pain to type on. Between that and the near-impossibility of housebreaking this idiot puppy I have no time to blog.

My computer just quit going online. I paid to have a modem put in, it seems to have made the problem worse. I could at least play solitaire on it, now it won't even do that.