Focused at Fifty

Bobalu's Florida Keys One of Mom's favorite restaurants in the Florida Keys was Bobalu's Southern Cafe' on Big Coppitt Key on US Route 1. When she and my stepdad Barry lived in Key West, they would often go there for lunch. It was a favorite restaurant of mine as well when I would visit. I would always get their conch fritters and upon the urging of my Mom, it was the first place I ordered fried green tomatoes. Mom said she loved them and so did I. Bobalu's still exists and has been open for over 20 years. It has changed owners since Mom and Barry lived in the Keys but still has the great carefree Key West atmosphere which has attracted years and years of tourists and locals. Even though this recipe is technically an Amish  one, I still thought of Mom and the Florida Keys while making it. Now I can only surmise that Mom had chosen this recipe so she could make them on her own when she came up North to her home in Lake Wyononah. Well unfortunately she never

A summer pic-nic staple is the potato salad. It seems as if everyone's family has their own recipe. As with many of the recipes that I have posted, there are just so many variations out there. My mother's recipe is a family favorite and below, you will see that I have chosen to tweak it to suit my own tastes. I had always wanted to make potato salad and when I started this project, I was pretty excited to discover my Mom's recipe. She made this for our spring and summer pic-nics and barbecues. While preparing the ingredients, I have such a new found respect for my mother and sister Sheryl. It's not that it's hard or difficult, it is just a bit time consuming. And you gotta love a recipe with only four basic commands: boil, chop, mix, chill! In retrospect, it did seem like Mom was making it for hours in our 70's kitchen in my childhood home. Always chopping and mixing and then ordering us kids to get out of the kitchen. Like the previous recipe I posted for

This is a great article from the April 2015 issue of  The Atlantic entitled "Meet the New Bitch" by writer Britt Peterson about the origins of the word "bitch." I really enjoyed it and wanted to share. It makes you think of how words lose old meanings and gain new ones over time. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/meet-the-new-bitch/386246/ The biggest example that I can think of is the word "awful". This word once referred to the inspiration of awe, fear or wonder. These days, it refers to something so horrible or unpleasant. How it got from one to the other beats me. I didn't get that far. LOL Another word that I remember which once meant something else is the word "myriad." I specifically remember this word from my SAT vocab study courses back in high school. It's a noun meaning a great number but it once meant 10,000 of something, such as a myriad of troops. So the next time you are saying something, realize