For your viewing pleasure I want to present the best popcorn ever. The name is Panhandle Popcorn. Warning – food porn overload.
popcorn
Whip Cream
My husband Chuck and I are extreme foodies. He spent his career in the grocery business and I have a certificate in Food Science from the American Institute of Baking. We love good food. He loves ice cream more than anything. It reals havoc on his arthritis and diabetes . I found whip cream satisfies his craving.
For Christmas he ordered me a CO2:cartridge whip cream dispenser. It is so easy to use. I store it in the fridge. I put about a cup of heavy cream, a teaspoon of Mexican Vanilla and package of Splenda into the canister. I put the contraption together, put in the cartridge and shake a little bit. I have instant whipped cream. The flavor is heavenly and it makes him feel so very spoiled.
There is cobbler hiding under all that whip cream. Decadent is what it is.
BlackBerry Cobbler
I love blackberry cobbler. My grandmother would have it every time we would come visit. My aunt gave me the family pan for cooking it in. Every time I eat it I remember days of running through hayfields in the summer and the old farm.
My grandmother made hers with biscuit dough. I make mine using an easier recipe that I prefer the flavor of. It freezes well so I prepare ahead and put in the oven when I have a need for it. I later covered this in whip cream. Heaven just hit my mouth.
OK I Am About to Lose My Shit
A young lady came to me at the grocery store my husband managed a little over a year ago. She had heard that we take in young people to our home. My husband and I host exchange students every year. She spoke to my husband and I about her troubles and asked for a home. We already had two girls coming to our house for the school year, what would it hurt to have a third? This young lady has just turned 18 and was in her senior year of high school.
I told her that the main rule of the house was to tell us if she would not be in by 10 because that is when the door is locked. She asked if that was it. I told her she was legally an adult and was accountable to herself for any wrong decisions she would make. Turns out she got pregnant. Imagine that. It’s hard to put reins on a wild horse.
She told me and Chuck that she wanted an abortion. I told her that I believe every one has freedom of choice. She has the freedom to choose but I had the freedom not to allow her to live in our home. We agreed that she wanted us to raise the baby. As soon has she had that baby nature took over and she has been a great little mother. Her baby is her world.
My son moved into the house. He is 29. As soon as I saw the two of them together I knew another baby would be coming. She is due in May. She told me she got pregnant on purpose. Why oh why do young ladies play such games?
So now we have two adults, a baby and three dogs living in the downstairs room. When you pass the room it reeks of dirty dog. My washer has sand and dog hair in it on the rare occasions she washes. The lint trap on the dryer is full of dog hair, food is left on the stove nightly, the best steak goes missing, trash is never taken out, the fridge is overtaken with their items and all the forks are missing.
Oh, and did I say, they pay no rent and he is still on our cell phone plan. Soooo. Chuck spoke with said son. Words were exchanged. People were disowned. Blood pressures were raised. We were told we would have to legally evict them. Chuck stroked out. I made the son dress his daddy and put him in the car to rush to the ER.
They told me they would move out in March. The girl gets WIC, SNAP, and is working in getting roughly $1000 a month from the government. She does not want an apartment because they would have to pay extra for the dogs. She had her income,tax direct deposited to her bank account but her bank account was closed for being overdrawn. She had made no attempts to get any of her stimulus checks. She is sitting on roughly $10,000 that she is just now making an effort to collect.
So I got our electric bill. We live in Texas. We had the cold snap that defunded our electrical grid. Our bill was around $300 more than normal. I mentioned this to the little princess. She offered no help.
So I went to turn on the TV tonight. It would not turn on. I just paid a large payment to AT&T so I know it not that. It was the cord in the living room where princess had been watching princess cartoons earlier in the day. I knocked on their door to make sure the TV in their room was working. There she sat in the rocking chair in that smelly room with my favorite wax burner going. I lost my shit.
Hyacinth
One of my favoriteSpring flowers is the hyacinth. I plant them by my front porch. I love catching a wiff of them when I go in and out of my house. The colors are so very purple. I am saddened that they only last a short time.
I would like to study up on how to propagate the bulbs. I would love for by flower bed to be covered in this lovely flower next spring. Do they need to be taken out of the ground and dries over the winter? If anyone has experience with these feel free to share tips with me. Thanks.
Road Trip
Tomorrow Chuck and I are going on a road trip. He is not allowed to drive right now because he is on seizure medication. He really does not like to travel far distances. He was in many car accidents when he was a teen and should have lost his life in a few of them. He also has a sibling that was in a fatal car crash. He has panic attacks when he rides in the car with me. Going on trips in the dark is even more disturbing to him,
We are driving an hour and a half away to go get him a COVID shot. He is in a tissue going so far away and told me to get him one closer. He does not understand how lucky he is to get an appointment at all. He has already told me he has a stomach ache. Sometimes these occur when he does not want to go on an outing. Come hell or high water I am getting his ass in the car to go get that shot. He will be so mad at me.
Well, at 6:35 am this morning the alarm went off. He said he was not going. I rolled over and went back to sleep. There will be another time.
The Lake People
When I was a young married woman I lived about a fifteen minutes away from a popular lake. This was my first marriage and everything about being a homemaker was great and exciting. I loved making muffins in the morning. I loved making roast in the slow cooker on Sundays. My first husband drove a truck long haul and I pretty much had a house to myself for weeks at a time. I had many hobbies and kept busy with them.
One day our dryer died. We had a washateria just around the block. It was easier to just do my wash all at once. I made it part of my routine to go do my laundry every Sunday. I worked for a large insurance company and I was off on the weekends. I really enjoyed the laundromat.
I started going every Sunday about the same time. I would often visit with people that I met there. I met a young couple that were very tanned and always tipsy. They told me they would go to the lake every Sunday afternoon after all the crowd and campers had left. They would gather up all the belongings people had left behind. Every Sunday afternoon they would show me their haul. I found this intriguing. It was actually very interesting.
When my husband came back home off the road I told him about the new friends I had made. He was a very particular person and was horrified by the new story. That week he purchased a new dryer and I never went to the laundromat again.
Sunshine
Here is a picture I took today at the farm.Chuck and I have agreed to spend at least an hour a day outside in the sunshine. This is a big ordeal. The stroke / dementia has put Chuck in a depression. He is most comfortable relaxing in bed watching TV or checking his Facebook. Some days he has trouble remembering many things.
So today was the first hour of our agreed upon outing. We took the trash down to the dumpster. We got the mail. We looked in the shop for treasures. Then we visited with the dogs and looked at the pretty flowers. I would love to have an iris farm here. I have so many ideas and so little time and energy.
The daffodils and hyacinth are the first flowers to bloom in the spring. I love to plant hyacinth in the front flower beds so I can catch a wiff of the scent every time I go through the front door. Spring is here.
The Last Supper
Our place is filled with treasures. This is the old shop. I have not truly investigated it and all of it’s belongings. We are thinking of making this a wood working shop. We will be clearing it out this weekend. Today’s story is about a treasure I found.
My step-father was a lay-minister, prison minister, and a missionary. I love finding religious art in his stash of items. This is a heavy piece of plaster. I was thinking it should go in our kitchen but Chuck says it belongs in the living room. I think I might make a Jesus wall in the downstairs hallway.
I think the piece is lovely. It is very heavy. This is The Last Supper.
The Fine Line
My mother was a brilliant woman. She was taught and shared with her children the importance of being educated. Her sisters went to Las Cruces New Mexico during WWII to go find brilliant husbands to marry. She was an award winning published poet and was also very good at business.
She was also very troubled mentally. One of my earliest memories was of me sitting in my childhood rocking chair holding my mother’s head while she shed tears over her failing marriage.i was around three. She stayed in that marriage for the next 20 some odd years.
She always told me that I was an unplanned mistake and she never wanted me. I got over that statement a long time ago. It is easy to forgive mentally ill people. She also told me that most brilliant people walk a fine line between brilliance and insanity. She told me the trick to it all was to never let Anyone know that you are mentally ill. OK…
I grew up thinking her behavior was the norm. When I was a teenager I spent lots of time at my friends house. Her mother was a housewife. She would cook and clean and kept a beautiful home. She also read books constantly. How could she be so smart but be so normal? This was such a new concept.
Mother has since passed away. I talk much comfort in knowing that when we go to heaven God makes us perfect and complete. I am eager to met this mother.
