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Lots of Summer Vegetables Available

I wish there was a Farmer’s Market close to my house. I don’t know of any except the one downtown, and I hate to drive downtown. I end up spending an extra $10 in gas to go all the way downtown and an extra $10 to the trip for paid parking. So the cost of fresh vegetables is already $20 before I even pick out the first one.

The last time I went to the Farmer’s Market, the price of vegetables was not any cheaper than what I can buy at Kroger grocery stores. I’m not sure there is much advantage to shopping at Nashville’s Farmer’s Market other than you are supporting local farmers and local businesses rather than a big grocery store chain like Kroger and whatever farms they decide at a corporate level to buy from.

There is a little place on the side of the road that sells fresh vegetables and fresh flowers on Lebanon Road. I don’t usually take Lebanon Road to go anywhere, but when I know I am going that way, I usually stop and buy a few things. I went by there yesterday and found lots of summer vegetables. They are a little cheaper than Kroger and the owner tells me that all the produce is grown locally. So I don’t mind supporting this guy and his wife.

I tried to grow some tomato plants on my patio, but they did not produce much. The tomatoes are so small and colored funny that I ended up throwing them out. It was nice to find a fresh picked, field grown tomato at the vegetable stand. One slice of their tomato covers the entire piece of bread! So I enjoyed a fabulous tomato and mayo sandwich last night. And I’ll have another one tonight for dinner, with a couple pieces of bacon and some lettuce on top.

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Rainy Forecast for the Fourth

This year I was really looking forward to going downtown on the Fourth of July holiday, but now I don’t think I will be going. The weather forecast is for rain tonight and all day tomorrow and a rainy Fourth of July night – all the way into Friday night. Yuck.

Several municipalities are cancelling their fireworks shows based on the rainy forecast. Some are pushing them out to Labor Day holiday weekend, which is a long way off but a kind of nice idea to add to that holiday celebration. Around here Labor Day does not usually mean much other than some people get a day off from work and all the outdoor swimming pools close.

Closing the pools on the first weekend of September is stupid in the South. The weather here is usually warm enough to enjoy a swimming pool for another 4 – 6 weeks.  I can see that if they need lifeguards it might be hard to find teenagers and college students available for lifeguard jobs, but truth be known, school here starts August 1, so the teens and college kids are long gone before Labor Day.

Anyway, if it really does rain all day and night tomorrow, I will stay home and watch the fireworks on TV instead of heading downtown. The last time I went downtown for fireworks, we got caught in a violent thunderstorm halfway through the fireworks show and the asshole police would not let us leave the bridge to go to our cars. They forced us to stay out on the bridge over the Cumberland River and risk getting hit by lightning. I was never so mad and so scared we would be hit by lightning before in my life. I will never let the police force me to stand outside in a thunderstorm again. So any time there is a serious threat of rain involved with a downtown event, I refuse to go.

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Technology Changing So Quickly

Thinking back to when I was a young child, my parents had analog telephones scattered throughout the house. They started with one incoming telephone line, then when my sisters and I were teenagers and hogging the phone talking to all our friends, they got a second incoming line for us girls. Then we started getting online which tied up the phone line and no one could call us without getting a busy signal. So they got a third phone line – primarily for internet but also a backup line for us girls. After all, three teenage girls can do a whole lot of talking on the phone, between their girlfriends AND their boyfriends!

But now, we’ve grown and moved out, we all have cell phones and we get online using cable instead of the telephone line. So my parents decided to give up the home phone line and save $50 a month. I don’t blame them!

Another big technology change has been instant messaging and texting. What a great convenience that is! Especially when you just need to push a message to someone and not really talk to them or engage in a 2-way communication. I use texting all the time with my sisters and my parents, and I love the way they can get in touch with me any time, even if I am on the phone and on the internet, all through my cell phone.

I just love how technology is changing so quickly. Now if they will just start reducing the monthly charges. I don’t see how they can justify these high prices for phone service any longer – they are not spending money on expensive phone lines and cables – it’s all digital.

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Stanley Cup Viewing Party

Watching pro sports on TV is just more fun when you have several people watching the game with you. I am looking for a Stanley Cup TV viewing party tonight – anybody know what sports bar is showing hockey instead of basketball?

I watched the first two Stanley Cup playoff games at home, alone. And usually I am totally OK with being alone. But the finals are so exciting, I would have more fun with at least 4-5 other people cheering and having fun watching the game live on cable.

My favorite team is the Nashville Predators, but they have not made it to the finals yet. This year the championship game series is between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Boston Bruins. Both teams are great and the first two games have both gone into over time.In hockey, there are no tie games and Stanly Cup overtime means sudden death – the first team to score wins the game.

I am cheering for the Blackhawks – I am in love with Chicago’s goalie, Corey Crawford. That man is amazingly flexible and quick!

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Listening to the Oldies

My favorite way to listen to music is with the online service called Spotify. You can use it for free, but I pay a small amount every month to get extra features. I’m not sure what the difference is, but I love Spotify and I don’t mind spending $5 a month to support this service.

Tonight I will be listening to the Oldies while I clean house and do the laundry. The weird thing is that my definition of the Oldies might be different from what you call the Oldies. There are actual Oldies radio stations, but they play really old songs, like from the 1950’s and 1960’s. That’s before most of us were even born. In my world, Oldies means the songs of the 1980’s.

The 1980’s songs were so fun for dancing and the best days of heavy metal bands. All the great Metal bands were forming their sound in the 80’s – like Metallica, Guns and Roses, Kiss, AC/DC, Alice in Chains, etc., although the genre got it’s start in the late ’60’s and 70’s. I think the 80’s were the hay day and I love the loud, upbeat music while I am busy scrubbing floors and washing dishes.

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Critters Getting Into My Garden

I have a garden that I planted this year. It’s in the only spot of my whole yard that gets enough sun to grow anything. My neighbor lady is mad at me for planting the garden there – she says that I should have put it in my back yard instead of the side yard, because “no one wants to look at that!” I have to tell you – I was actually offended that she told me that. I don’t see anything wrong with having a small vegetable garden in the side yard, and there are so many trees in my back yard that nothing will grow back there – not even grass!

For the past several mornings when I go to check the garden and water it, I have found one of the bean plants broken off and ruined. I suspect that some kind of critter is getting into my garden at night and braking off the bean plants. We have skunks, foxes, rabbits, raccoons and deer in my neighborhood. Do you think any of them are interested in beans?

I have no idea what kind of critter it would be – and I sure hope that it is not my neighbor doing it to spite me!

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New Store at the Mall

The new H&M retail store is having their grand opening today. The first 300 shoppers to come in the door were given a gift card with a mystery amount on the gift card. Some of the gift cards were for as little as $25 off an item. But there were several gift cards that were worth $200 and even $300 for about a dozen lucky shoppers!

I could not get there this morning to take advantage of the grand opening gift cards. I hope to check out the store next week, though, when I go to the mall to find a Father’s day gift. The H&M stores have a reputation of great fashion buys for men and women at bargain prices. So maybe I can get a few new shirts and even a couple of dresses if they are as great as I’ve been told!

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No More Box Cake Mixes

The grocery store had box cake mixes on sale for $1.50 per box and then matching frosting on ale for $1.50, too. So add in the cost of a couple of eggs and some oil, the electricity used for a hand mixer and the oven to bake the cake, and you can make a cake for under $5 – that’s a pretty good price. You cannot buy a bakery cake for under $10 these days, so making it yourself does save some money – plus you know exactly what is in the cake. I know that I use real butter – not margarine, shortening or lard. I know that I use real eggs and real vanilla extract – not powdered, dry or imitation anything.

But now that I have seen a recipe for making a yellow cake from scratch, I wonder why I have been using a box mix to bake cakes? I can use regular flour and some baking soda and have just as good a cake as what comes out of a box. It just means I have to measure out a few more items. Big deal! I have decoded to make the next cake from scratch and not buy any more box mixes. And I am going to experiment with the amounts to make just one cake layer instead of the traditional 2 layers, or just 6 cupcakes instead of a whole dozen.

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Many Uses for Binder Clips

One of the most useful office supply items is the binder clip. I’m sure you know what item I’m referring to – it is a black metal clamp that has two silver colored wire clips that you squeeze to make the clamp open. Some poeple call them “alligator clips” because when you squeeze the clips the metal clamp is a little bit like alligator jaws that slap shut with a lot of force. If you have an extra large binder clip that clamps down on your finger – it does hurt!

The binder clips were used in offices as an alternative to 3-ring binders to hold a stack of papers together. There are different sizes of binder clips that hold any number of sheets from extra small binders holding 2-10 sheets to the extra large binders holding up to 300 sheets.

But I use these binder clips at home for other purposes, too. My open bags of snack chips and pretzels are rolled and clipped to keep the air out and the chips fresh. When I have a big bag of fresh vegetables, like carrots or broccoli, I roll the tops of those packages and put a binder clip on them, too.

To hold batches of grocery store coupons together, I use a small binder clip on the bottom so that I can easily flip through all the coupons and easily read the expiration dates.

Do you keep any binder clips at home for a different use? I’d love to hear what you use them for, too.

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My Favorite Snack Craving

Everyone has a “go to” snack. Its the food – even if junk food – that you grab when you are just a bit hungry and don’t feel like cooking a whole meal. You want something to munch on while watching TV or working on the computer, or you’ve already had dinner and you just want something crunchy or salty or sweet to put a smile on your face before going to bed.

My favorite snack is a scoop of hummus with some dried pita chips with sea salt. The hummus has some mild spices and a scattering of pine nuts. I buy the big plastic container of hummus for only about $5 at Sam’s Club and a huge bag of dried pita chips with sea salt for only about $4, also at Sam’s. If I buy the same things at the local grocery store I end up paying the same money but getting containers with only about half of the servings. So it makes more sense to go to Sam’s and stock up.

If I don’t want hummus, I usually crave something sweet, like a cookie or a slice of pie. Lately I have been craving cakes, but I think I will try cake pops instead of a full size cake. I like the smaller serving size of a cake pop and I don’t need as much self control on portion size if I just grab a cake pop and don’t allow myself a second.