Focused at Fifty

First, some interesting history about meatloaf from the website Wikipedia: "American meatloaf has its origins in scrapple, a mixture of ground pork and cornmeal served by German-Americans in Pennsylvania since Colonial Times.  However, meatloaf in the contemporary American sense did not appear in cookbooks until the late 19th century."     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meatloaf "In 2007, meatloaf was voted the seventh-favorite dish in the United States according to Good Housekeeping.   During the Great Depression cooking meatloaf was a way to stretch the food budget for families, using an inexpensive type of meat and other ingredients as leftovers; along with spices, it was popular to add cereal grains to the meatloaf to stretch the meat. The tradition lives on with the merits of producing a lower-fat dish with superior binding and consistency.The meatloaf is typically eaten with some kind of sauce or relish."   http://en.w...

Hummingbird feeder and the rabbit. (A little blurry due to screen window) Last week was an incredibly stressful work week. I'm not going into detail but it was a doozy. I don't want to alienate anyone so I will keep mum.  I have an incredible view out my kitchen window across my yard; First, the middle aged oak tree with all the bird feeders, then onto the long rectangular shaped flower garden in the middle and finally ending at the other side of the yard at our fire-pit. I will often come home and make myself an after-work cocktail and just gaze out at the yard, either from the kitchen window or relax out on the deck. I love my yard. This particular day, I leaned up against the kitchen sink counter and spied our "yard" rabbit out by the middle flower bed. Looking towards the house with the middle flower bed on the left side of the picture. He was munching away for a good five minutes on clover, irises, alfalfa, various grasses, lily of the valley, and ...

My Dad, Robert Haynes & Carl Chew, Sr (& the Chew's tan van!) circa late 70's While making this salad, I thought about summer BBQs with good friends and family way back in the late 70's and early 80's.   My family was close with two other families from our home town of Wenonah. Mom and Dad bought our house from the Gardler family who lived there prior to us, and who then bought a farm down in Swedesboro, NJ. They in turn, introduced us to the Chew family whom also lived in town. The ages of the kids ranged in the beginning with the youngest ones, the Chew kids, to the late teens of the Gardler kids with myself, brother, and sister falling somewhere in the middle. Each year we would spend Memorial Day, July 4 th , and Labor Day BBQing at each other's homes.  The Haynes' would host Memorial Day, Jane and Carl Chew would host July 4 th (the parade in Wenonah was and still is legendary), and Anne and Rich Gardler would host Labor Day at the Farm...

For those of you which have not seen me freak out, shuffle about despondently, or mutter to myself over the course of this last week, "Where can it be, where can it be, where can it be", I have lost my cell phone. I am hoping it is just misplaced. I am now resigned to the fact that I may never find it. But an amazing thing happened this past week ... I survived. I also learned a little about myself in the process. Cell phones, none of which are mine since mine is LOST!!!!!! I was getting ready to go down to Philly to see my sister Sheryl for her birthday celebration and had just texted her if she needed me to pick up anything. Her response was no, she was in the store. OK, I texted, I'm leaving now. I packed up the car and in the span of 10 minutes, I lost myself phone, simple as that. You could say I just misplaced it but oh no, baby, it has gone waaaay beyond that! With the car all packed, I tore everything apart, went through every bag, the entire car, th...

I washed a load of laundry the other night which resulted in accidentally huffing bleach. Mixed with a recently downed shot of whiskey, it actually wasn't that bad. Thank G-d the hot water heater is next to the washer and dryer or I would have face-planted right into the cat's litter box on the floor.  Argh! Permanent coffee stain. My bleach inhalation occurred while doing a load of whites. The next day, I was wearing to work a freshly laundered and bleached blue pinstriped white button down. That's when I saw the permanent coffee stain on my sleeve! No amount of bleach could save this shirt. Well that's just GREAT! I exclaimed out loud in my office. My favorite shirt quickly became the shirt "most likely end of in the trash" as soon as I got home.  SO much for freshly laundered and bleached. The little incident reminded me of the great schmear incident of Jim Thorpe, PA, back about 5 years ago. I quickly scanned my blog posts and realized I hadn't...

Ready to  mix! Ambrosia is a traditional American fruit salad which is thought to have originated in the early 19th century. There are so many variations of this salad across our country. You can add fruit cocktail, grapes, bananas, pecans, whipped cream instead of sour cream, yogurt, honey, as well as other ingredients. The list goes on and on. None of which included the special secret ingredient I copied down from my cousin Helen's recipe. This Ambrosia recipe is from my father's cousin, Helen Haynes Dreiske. Helen and her husband, Gordon, farmed the Haynes/Dreiske "family" ranch in tiny Keldron, South Dakota (population 11). We visited them on trips out West each summer.  As with most large families, there were often BBQs, dinners, and picnics with lots of food and drink. This is one recipe of several that Helen always made and then gave my mother Abby during our visits. Helen and Gordon have since passed on but I am happy to include her recipes in my blog. ...

Please watch this slick, hip video. This concept is incredible:  To have roads set with solar panels which will spur the creation of a new industry allowing our country to move towards a self sustaining future away from oil, natural gas, and coal.  I watched this video several weeks ago and wanted to share my thoughts and concerns. I would love to see it happen but I feel it would take such large scale investment by the government. It would create thousands of jobs but the initial investment would have to be incredible. And although it is a great idea, it gives no specifics in terms of start up costs or total costs on the large scale. One has to remember though that most of the great inventions started small through prototypes by someone with an idea, passion, resilience, determination, and focus. I am concerned though, with the resulting future effect on the construction and infrastructure industry.  Yes, we would be crea...