Wordless Wednesday: Days of Baby Blanket Crocheting

Ten Tuesday Thoughts

Ten Thoughts!


On a Tuesday, no less!

1. I am enjoying the nice cool ATLien temperatures these days. Although I admit it was a bit jarring to go from 98 degree days to 70 degree days and at times 40 degree nights. That is a big swing!

2. I refuse to turn on my furnace until November 1st. I want to take advantage of a month or so of low utility bills. But lets just say I was around the house shivering quite hard a couple of nights.

3. This has been my favorite salad in the past couple of weeks.

I wish I had a chef who could make that for me EVERYDAY! Every single day!

4. Song I'm listening to right now: "Nothing has Ever Felt Like this" by Rachelle Ferrelle and Will Downing


How GREAT is that song? My goodness! That is REAL music! I miss it much.

5.I am ready for the weekend. It cannot get here fast enough.

6. I hate that I feel this way, as it means that work is boring and meaningless. Hopefully this is just a short spell of time of it feeling like this. Or maybe it may mean that it's time to make a change.

7. I don't eat after 5:00 pm most days. I only drink water. And I notice I sleep a lot better. No more late night eating for me, especially after 6 pm at the latest. That is a goal for the 2020 season, though.

8. I am currently trying to get my mind right for the Christmas season, meaning getting ready to give out some cheap and useful gifts. That means plenty of cookies!

9. Are ya'll watching The Watchmen?

I am, but I am confused as hell. But I am down for some Regina King and Yahya Abdul Mateen II.

 ALL DAY. I will watch whatever they're in. Yes ma'am. Yes indeed.  Black love on the screen, man. I do not know what the hell I am watching, but my eyes are glued to the screen. Glory!

10. What I'm listening to right now: "Is it Still Good to You" by Ashford Simpson.



That too is a GREAT song. As you can tell, I like old music, because today's music is HOT garbage compared to this. Smoking hot!

That's all for Ten Tuesday Thoughts!

Have a great evening!

Freestyle Fridays: Them Good Shoes

Happy Friday.

And I am glad it is Friday. Would be nice if this was a payday, tho.

Really.

Shoe of the Week. Anyway, there's nothing like a good pair of shoes. I have a favorite pair that's in desperate need of repair, and so I need to work on that. Next time I see some shoes I really like, I will buy two pair, and put one pair away. Because it is hard for me to find good shoes.

But, I ran up on my workplace Mom, Lady P. And that woman knows some good shoes.

I happen to run up in her office and have a seat next to her. She was busy as usual, and she allowed me to jibber jabber while she tried to concentrate on sending out emails. I know she was busy, and I don't usually bother folk too much, but she has the patience of God when it comes to me. I saw her office door open and just wanted to see her.

While I was going on and on about something of no particular importance, I looked down at her feet. She had some designer sneakers on. NOT, Nike or Adidas... none of that.

She was donning some Louis Vuitton sneakers.

"Mama!" I hollered. "Look at them shoes, girl! That's them good shoes!!"

"Yes, these are some nice shoes. I like these. I don't wear them often."

I wanted to ask if they were fake. Like, if she got them from the local discount mall. The discount mall gets busted pretty often around these ways for carrying counterfeit merchandise.

But I didn't ask her, because I knew they were real. Mama like them good shoes, you see.

"I bet your daughter Mia looking for her shoes right now. Give her shoes back."
"Unh-unh," she said. "These are my shoes. Mia tries to raid my closet."

I would too. Because those are some good shoes.

"Turn around and let me get a pic of the back of those shoes, Mama!"

Yes those are the real Louis Vuitton shoes right there. Those look like they have pieces of the brown classic LV purses affixed to the back.

"Girl," Mama said, "when you get my age, you like to have nice stuff. You get what you like, you know?"

"I know that's right," I said.

Since I am getting up in age, I thought I'd go on and look up those shoes. Maybe I could run up to LV store in Lenox mall and get a pair.

When I saw the price, I just closed the website down. I will just pay my mortgage instead.

Maybe one day, tho...

I will just stick with my $50 sneakers for now.

But I love Mama's shoes. That's them good shoes.

Song of the Week. I try to post whatever song I've been listening to all week. I have 2 songs, and I cannot decide what to post. So I will post both.

"Trippin'" by Total.



"Don't Wait for Me" by Morris Day.



Both of those songs were songs that randomly came up on my Spotify streaming lists, and both had me like "Oh!! I remember that song!" I can remember the state of my life and what was going on when those songs came out. Some songs just transport you back to a place and time. A pleasant surprise indeed!!!

So I have had those songs on repeat.

That's it for Freestyle Fridays.

Have a great Weekend! On Purpose!

When the Peppers are HOT...

So I made a visit to my favorite local farmers market on Sunday.

I love hot peppers, and I saw a pepper I'd heard about but never seen.

GHOST peppers.



I only bought a few, as I didn't want to just didn't want to eat them whole or even cut them up in food. They are too hot for that. In fact, they are the second hottest pepper on record (1,000,000 SU. (The Carolina Reaper is the hottest at 1,500,000 SU).

No, I wanted to dry them and make some infused olive oil. I like to use infused pepper oils for sautees. They give a great flavor. 

So I dried my peppers in my oven, as it has a drying setting that I rarely use. I dried them for 8 hours overnight at a low temperature.  Here's the result.



They look burnt, but they are not. I placed them I a plastic bag and crushed them up. I tasted a piece the size of a grain of salt and thought my head was going to pop off. That little bit was potent and HOT!

I remembered that I had some African birdseye chili peppers, aka African devil peppers in the cabinet. I keep these around.



I keep a baggie of these around. One or two of them flavor up a dish. They are hot, but Ghost peppers are up to ten times hotter.

But here's the result. The tall bottle is the ghost pepper oil, and the short bottle is the African devil peppers oil.

Aren't those lovely? I bought the bottles at a Container store on Saturday for two bucks each. Those will sit up in a kitchen cabinet in the dark for a couple of weeks. The oils should be good and hot by then.

I tried a little of the African devil pepper oil to sautee some two chicken thighs this morning. I used a half teaspoon of it, and dilute it the skillet with more oil.

It was good, and it was hot. Not the blow your head off hot, but noticeably hot and spicy.

Alas, I am afraid to try the ghost pepper oil. I may not recover. Maybe that bottle will just be... ornamental. Something very pretty to look at.

But it was something fun and different. I was thinking of making these and giving them as Christmas gifts.

I can do it, but maybe I should try it with a milder pepper.

Much milder peppers.

Meals of the Week

 Here are a couple of my favorite meals this week.

I try to make sure I eat my raw veggies during the week. Salads are the best route to this goal.

Now, what's interesting here is the radish.  It's called Watermelon radish. It's named from its very apparent similarity to a cut watermelon.

It was interesting. It did not taste like watermelon. It taste like radish. I am not a big radish fan. But it makes a very pretty addition to a dish. I'm not running to the store to buy it. It was on a salad bar, and that's as good as any reason to try it.

My second favorite dish was my bootleg version of barbeque shrimp!

I caught a special on head-on shrimp. For some odd reason, I couldn't get it as hot as I have in the past, and I didn't feel like fighting with it. But it was quite good with some warm French bread. Made me feel like I was in New Orleans all over again!

Good stuff!

Hence the Fence, Part II

(Yes, there is a "Hence the Fence, part I". Imagine that. And look at the date on it... it is an OLD post.)

So there has been some craziness going on with my backyard fence for at LEAST the past year.

It's been leaning something awful, with one stick holding it up... barely holding it up.

Then I was leaving for work one morning, and I saw this.

UGGGGGGH. I was O_O!!!

And my silly behind went back there and tried to lift the completely fallen part back up into place.

SHOOT. That was a fruitless effort.

Look at this tomfoolery.

UGGGHHHH.

Now, like I said, the fence was weathered and was falling down. And my next door neighbor, well, his part had completely fell down, and at some point he had his part of the broken down fence removed. And I noticed something: the locals had started using our yards as a cutthrough from our street to the next street over.

I tell you, it's a bit jarring when I sweeping off my front porch or washing dishes and I spy someone just walking past the side of my house. VERY jarring.

This wasn't that big of a deal. But when I saw a whole SECTION of my fence down, I had to do something fast.

Why? Because of one thing, really. My neighbors across the street have moved, and I suspect (don't quote me on this), that some locals are using my back yard as a route for raiding that house of its appliances or AC or something like that.

And I can't have that.

So I was extra motivated to stay the least.

By the end of the day (a Thursday), I'd found a contractor to tare out that fence and build another. We were mailing contracts and deposits at 10 pm that night.

And when I arrived home on Friday evening from work, Home Depot had delivered all of this fella's supplies were in my backyard. (He'd said that he refused to stand in line at Home Depot buying things when he can get his supplies delivered by Home Depot. Apparently that is popular now with the contractors).

By midmorning Saturday, the contractor was out there knocking down the fence. And by the time I was leaving for my book club meeting, he'd had it down, and I could see the neighbor's backyard.

I told him to keep the old posts up if they were in good condition. Good enough. I wasn't trying to do nothing pretty. The neighbors gotta stare at the posts, not me. Humph.

That old fencing was busted! Super raggedy! Uggh!

And by Saturday night? I had a NEW beautiful fence.

How lovely is that? And one of the locals slid up on me and convinced me to allow him to get rid of the weeds and trim a tree or two. Worked out well enough.

The fence extended about 3 feet over into my neighbor's yard, but dude ain't said a word. And I know he's been looking at it. His yard was the big cut through part. No more! Although I do plan on talking to him about it if I see him anytime soon.

But within 48 hours of first making a call, the fence got done. Part of me had been wanting to get the fence taken down, as far back as 2016, but a neighbor on the other street behind me and one house over filed a lawsuit to move the fence. It was decided that they would move my 2 FEET OF my FENCE at their expense. Such BS!! My lawyer said don't have the old fencing taken down until they move it.

That was 3 years ago. They never did.

They wanted to work out something with me, but I sicced a lawyer on them. There was no way I was signing paperwork with all the gentrification going on. I may have been signing away my house, since they pushing up on folks to move out so the white folks can move in.

But now, I have a NEW fence. And it is beautiful. And there's no locals cutting through my yard.

Heck I may even spend a little time in the backyard!

A Very Cookie Day

Dedicated to "Carmen"...

So one of my favorite pastimes is making cookies.

I love making them in the morning while I'm watching TV, folding clothes, or washing dishes.

Not sure what that's about. It soothes me for some reason. It's therapeutic.

However, I don't want all of the cookies. I want a few, maybe no more than three or four. And those will last awhile.

It's just that when I want a cookie, I want a really good cookie. And the best are homemade.

No, you will not find me buying cookies off of the cookie aisle at the grocery store. NO.

So, I do not mind making them. I just need to get rid of the bulk of them. They will go stale in my house. Yes, I have thrown cookies away before. Too bad, so sad.

Alas, there are ALWAYS homies at the workplace who will GLADLY take cookies off my hand.

Here's this morning batch cooling on the counter.

Those are oatmeal raisin walnut cookies. They were for Lady A.

The convo was looking crazy with Lady A yesterday.

"Girl, why you didn't tell me your birthday was on Wednesday?"
"I told you last week," she said.
"Man... I'ma make you some cookies, then. What kind you want?"
"Oatmeal raisin," she replied.
I grimaced. "I don't know if I have any raisins. I have to look for them."
"Or you can do the oatmeal, raisins, and chocolate chips together."
"YUUUUUCK," I hollered.

The convo went on about the type of cookies she wanted. And her and her hubby's birthdays are a day apart (Lawd, how does that happen?)  So Brother B likes my cookies. (I have to STRESS to her that she must share with B, though. Humph).

That was a 5 minute convo. I know the cubicle area had to be like, What the world is LadyLee whining about?

Lady A was like, whatever. That's what she like. And Lady A is on a high right now. Her and B going on vacay for their birthdays. She got that vacation braid job, braids so fresh that they looked like she'd just had them done that morning right before she came to work. Had me cracking on her...

"You not Lady A, you Carmen today!"

LOL

Anyway, back to my whining. I whine because I did not feel like looking for raisins.

But, I went home and immediately found the raisins. They were in the cabinet in a quart ziploc bag with other stuff like that. I had some gold and regular raisins, and it was just enough to make cookies. Thank goodness, because going to the store for a missing ingredient really sucks. I don't keep raisins around. I usually use dried cranberries, as they cut through some of the cookie sweetness.

But I wanted to hook Lady A up right, you know?

And that I did!

She got 1.5 dozen of oatmeal raisin walnut cookies!

(I also like drawing on bags. This too is mighty therapeutic for some reason).

There's always a few leftovers, so I took a bag to one of my new coworkers, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite peeps in the building. Lady Cora!

I think she got 6-8 cookies: oatmeal chocolate chip pecan, and the remainder of Lady A's oatmeal raisin walnut cookies. (I couldn't fit them all in A's bag).

She was munching down on them before I could even tell her the type of cookies in the bag. She'd never had them before.
"These good, girl," she mumbled while munching down on an oatmeal raisin cookies. "These real good."
LOL

This made for a great morning. It's been a long time since I baked cookies on a morning where I gotta go to work. But it was fun. And my lab experiments worked today, so GLORY! A great day.

Gotta bake cookies more often!

Have a great birthday, Lady A (and Brother B)! And many more!

Ten Tuesday Thoughts

Ten Thoughts! On a Tuesday.

1. Why is it still hot outside?

2. No let me rephrase this, since it is snowing in some parts of the country. Why is it still hot in the ATL this week?

3. Isn't this October now? Shouldn't I be seeing some nice temperatures in the 70s and the 80s?

4. Oh well, can't worry about that now. We are also in a drought. That is far more important. I can only remember it raining once in the last two weeks. I will take the heat with the rain if I can get it.

5. I find it interesting that we're not waiting for it to become cold before we run up on all things "pumpkin-spiced".  I saw some cream cheese in the store the other day.

6.  Look at that price: two for $5. Better get up on it while you can!

7. Why? Because it has been said that the pumpkin-spiced Spam is disappearing off the shelves.

8. Part of me wants to google some recipes using pumpkin-spiced spam, just to see why folks are all excited about it.  But no... I cannot. I WILL NOT.

9. BUT, I did come across a pumpkin-spiced food that I found intriguing. Pumpkin pie kit-kats!

Those are GOOD! They taste like sweet potato pie. But I can only eat one or two. If I'm going to eat some candy, I want some chocolate.

10. Song I'm listening to a lot this week: "Next Movement" by The Roots


Can you believe that song is 20 years old? And it is STILL great? A rap group/band. You know that's not happening in 2019. Nope. And the Roots still going strong as Jimmy Fallon's house band. Can't beat that!

That's it for my 10 thoughts on a Tuesday!