Monday, December 31, 2012

A Year in Review

As another years comes to close it's time to reflect on the happenings over the past 365.

Breathed in, Breathed out

Well... guess that about sums it up.

See you next year.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

A Pinch of This and a Dash of That

Have you ever been at the point in preparing dinners that everything seems boring? Lisa and I have experienced that of late. We've both cooked professionally (albeit years ago) and have made countless family meals so, one might assume we'd have an endless supply of recipes. Not necessarily so

Don't get me wrong. We've got a good supply of family favorites, but after twenty plus years even those lose their edge sometimes. We feel like a wagon on the Oregon Trail... We're in a rut!

Fortunately my mom just gave me a stack of old cookbooks. Not the ones sold on the shelves of Barnes and Noble and the like. No, these are from church congregations, families doing school fundraisers and even one from a sports teams wives. They range from the mid 60's through the 90's.

I've found some fun things so far. They're a collection of family favorites from all over the country. Mostly simple recipes; not over complicated and not pretentious. Some of the things that I find really interesting are the ingredients. Ones from the sixties have MSG listed. Ha! Good luck finding that in today's cookbooks. Other books have regional ingredients listed. Items that I would never find around here.

I think I've clipped out about a half dozen recipes that I'll try and I'm sure I'll find a few more, but my favorite find so far is the one I found in a church book. The "Chef's" name is Lynda Walp and this is what she submitted:

ELEPHANT STEW

Cut 1 elephant into small cubes; this should take two months. Add enough brown gravy to cover. Cook over kerosene fire about 4 weeks at 460 degrees. This will serve 3800 people. If more are expected, 2 rabbits may be added, but do this only if necessary, as most people do not like to find hare in their stew.

I like Lynda Walp!


Saturday, December 1, 2012

Moderation Is the Key

When I decided to fire up the ole' blog again I poked and prodded through a few of Blogger's features. While looking at the comments section I noticed a spike in a few posts I'd previously put up. Wondering why, I investigated further. Turns out that the spammers were having a field day in my absence. All sorts of gibberish and pointless garbage had been posted as comments.

What is it with these people?

I decided that putting comment moderation in place would allow me to filter through their BS and delete it before it made it into "print". It worked, but at the same it meant everyone else's legitimate comments would have to be approved by me before they were visible. This I didn't like.

Alas, I discovered that you can set moderation to "Sometimes". In this setting you can apply a number of days that allow all new comments to appear while ones that are 1, 7, 14 days (or whatever # you choose) to be moderated first.

I like this option. New comments can be displayed right away while anything older than 7 days (what I set it at) have to be approved first. Hopefully this will slow down the spammers. I'd like to say stop, but I know better.

Alrighty then, I now return you to your regularly scheduled blogging.