Hey everybody! Did you know you can leave a comment about my blog?

Just click on where it says 0 comments at the bottom and it will take you to a little square where you can write something BUT it says no anonymous comments so I guess you have to put in your e-mail address or something. OR you can email me directly, normajyoung@iwon.com

Yesterday Bob and I went to the beach, we took our lawn chairs and Bob put them RIGHT IN THE WATER! We took books but neither one of us read. Bob took a run. I took a rest! Marilyn's move date got moved up so I will be going to her house this week-end and her closing will be Monday and movers will be there Wednesday or Thursday and she will have a sale Friday and Saturday . So all of this will be over soon! I can't wait for her to get settled in her new place. So I have to go get busy now!

I Love CHICKEN!!!

I guess Herbert Hoover would have to be my favorite President. He promised us a "Chicken in Every Pot". Chicken is my personal favorite and it must be pretty popular among others too considering the volumes and volumes of chicken recipes that have been published. I think it is the most versatile of meats. You can eat a barbequed drumstick on the run or sit down to the most exotic, elegant meal with chicken starring as the entree.
Some brilliant person with a head for marketing thought of putting spicy sauces on deep-fried chicken wings and selling them for a price that I used to pay for a whole chicken and the rest is history. They also take strips of breast meat, bread them and deep fry them and call them "fingers", if your kid is a picky eater, rest assured that this is one item on the menu that they WILL eat. Can you imagine archaeologists of the future digging in the ruins and coming up with a menu that has "Chicken Fingers" on it? It will set their studies back for years as they try to determine what extinct bird lived in the twenty-first century, children will be taught, "centuries ago, there roamed on the earth, these creatures that were part bird and part human, they had wings but also FINGERS!"
I want to come up with a food that we would normally discard, but you could dress up and sell for an exorbitant price. I remember actually THROWING AWAY Potato Skins and Chicken Wings! What delicacy could we make out of Egg Shells, Banana Peels......?
We are planning on going to the "Country Buffet" today where I will have to fight Bob's Mom for their lovely crisp chicken breast. We are both fans of juicy white meat encased in that crunchy,golden brown skin. I have to go now, I'm starting to drool.

WHATTA DAY!!

Yesterday Bob and I went to Giant Eagle and got more FUZE water (I am an addict now!) and chicken and rented movies. We went to the Library and browsed and sat and read for a while. I wasn't looking out the window as much as usual because it was so gray and gloomy until Bob said, "Look at the rabbits!". I looked and there were 2 big brown rabbits hopping around right outside the window and I do mean HOPPING! One sprang straight up right in the air. We left and went and picked up Bob's check and took it to the bank and got gas. When we got home, I made a nice supper for Bob and we watched 2 movies, "DeLovely" (a movie about Cole Porter) and "My House in Umbria" They were both good. Bob has done his exercises and is going out for his run/walk. We are planning on going to Hoss's for Lunch. And then we will probably watch more movies.
The weather is supposed to be getting better today.

We are planning on visiting the "Tom Ridge Evironmental Center" but I don't think we want to go the first week-end it is open. I am going to read the paper now, I wonder if there will be anything in there for me to rant about, if there is, rest assured, I will tell you about it.

America's favorite Salad Dressings in order: Ranch, Italian, Creamy Italian, Thousand Island, French, and Caesar. I personally like Poppy Seed and Vidalia Onion Dressing as well as the above.

Charity is baking for the church Bazaar, Compassion is buying it back.....anon

Bob has a few days off!!! We are going to enjoy his mini vacation, we are planning on going to the library and renting movies. We watched a good movie last night, "Love Letters" Also watched "Mona Lisa Smile", I liked it too.

Monday we are planning on going to the Zoo with Bob's Parents and Sister and Bro-in-law and then having dinner at "Country Buffet". FUN! FUN!

Hey Everybody, Drink Pomegrante Juice, I drink 4 ozs everyday, it is good and so good for you!!! I also drink 4 ozs. of Blueberry nectar. Our refrigerator is full of water, FUZE water, Grapefruit juice, Pomegrante juice, Bluebery nectar, and skim milk. I ate lunch out yesterday with my friend and it is so hard to eat light in a restaurant, of course you can get salads and chicken dishes but that is all I eat at home so I like to get something different when I am out. So I came home and drank water all evening. This morning I drank my 4 ozs. of Pomegrante Juice and am now drinking White Tea FUZE water. I am starting to slosh when I walk. Our electric went out last night about 12:30 AM. I felt my way into Bob's room, I told him I couldn't be alone in the dark. My little sister is now at the Outer Banks (North Carolina) on vacation, she left Sunday morning and called me Sunday night and said it was 82 degrees down there. She will be back this Sunday night, She will ride in the Parade, Monday. The American Legion is having a memorial for her late husband. AND THEN! we start moving her! After she gets moved and settled, she is going to help me with our Patio, I can't wait to make it look nice. The pool should open this week-end, I want to get a bathing suit for this summer, I am looking for something with a turtle neck, (to cover up my own "Turtle Neck") and 3/4 sleeves to cover up my "flying squirrel" arms, also something with Tummy (and Butt) control. So I have to get busy now, tune in tomorrow! Bob is upstairs doing "Crunches" I can remember when the only crunch around here was Potato Chips! (He is getting a hard stomach!) No more flabby abs!

Tea with a capital T

Tea takes me back when people had time to sit down and have a cup of tea in a tea cup with a saucer, an oilcloth covered table with a glass sugar bowl in the middle. Green tea at one Grandma's house and black tea at another Grandma's. I remember I was always allowed to have tea, coffee was said to stunt a kid's growth but tea was okay. It was great sitting with the grown up ladies sipping tea.
Now you can get Huckleberry flavored decaffeinated ginseng laced tea in a styrofoam cup to drink alone while jogging, the art of tea-drinking has lost a lot!

There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.
.......Henry James, "The Portrait Of A Lady"

The mere chink of cups and saucers tunes the mind to happy repose.
.......George Gissing, "The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft

Bless the Banana!

Banana is an easy word to spell if you just remember when to stop.

Bananas have 4 times the protein of an apple, 5 times Vitamin A and Iron
besides being rich in Potassium. A banana a day keeps the doctor away!
I read that if you put a banana skin (yellow side out) on a wart and hold it
in place with surgical tape, the wart will go away (along with family and friends)
I can only think that after a few days, a wart might not be your biggest problem.

I also read if you burn off an extra 100 calories a day, you can lose 5 lbs. in 6 months without dieting. (I am not that patient, if would take me 5 years to get down to my "reasonable" weight!) Here's how to burn off those extra 100 calories:
CLIMB STAIRS for 10 minutes (this one is easy for me because when I get upstairs, I forget what I am after and have to go back down and I repeat this several times a day.)
DANCE for 10 minutes (with WHO? and I have to close the curtains, I have neighbors to protect, you know)
PLAY TAG WITH KIDS for 15 minutes (Gave this one up years ago)
CLEAN THE HOUSE for 30 minutes (This one does NOT work, I have tested it,
it just makes you want dinner out!)
MOW THE LAWN for 20 minutes (no riding mowers, Tubbo!) I don't think this works either, because when we lived out on Old Rte 86, Bob should have been down to 99 Lbs.
WASH THE CAR for 20 minutes (God washes our car with the rain he so generously send down)
GROCERY SHOP for 30 minutes (How is this going to work if you just go home and EAT those groceries?)
It's a toss up as to what concerns us most about the groceries we buy today---- the price or the ingredients.

Bless the Banana!

This lady has been missing from her family, if you see her, don't try to approach, don't call your local authorities, they don't want her back!

Don't be intimated by foreign cooking:

Tomatoes and Oregano make it Italian.

Wine and Tarragon make it French

Sour Cream makes it Russian

Lemon and Cinnamon makes it Greek

Soy Sauce makes it Chinese

Garlic makes it good!

"The Glob"

Our upstairs bathroom sink has been draining slowly, if you filled the sink up and came back an hour and a half later, the water level had only gone down a millimeter. (for those not into the metric system, that means it was DANG slow!). Last night I couldn't sleep, so I got up to come down and play on the computer but Bob was on the computer so I wandered around, pondering, "what to do?" "what to do?". You know how when you can't sleep, you think of strange things? Well, I thought "Let's clean out the sink drain!" I went back up with my plumber's tools (a box of baking soda and my decanter of salad vinegar.) I tried this method to no avail, now I had vinegar and baking soda that wouldn't go down. So I got out the plunger and proceeded to plunge until Bob came up to remind me that people were sleeping on the other side of the wall. Well, not EXACTLY on the other side because that would be their bathroom too and they should not be sleeping in their bathroom! If they sleep in their bathroom they deserve whatever they hear. But I had to agree with him, it did sound like an elephant throwing up. I have never personally experienced an elephant throwing up but one can imagine. So I waited until morning and after Bob left, I went into the bathroom and continued plunging. WELL, I've got to tell you, something came up out of the drain you wouldn't believe! There was alot of hair and I'm sure some teeth! I got it on a paper towel and I was thinking about drying it out and putting it in a plastic bag (gallon size) so I could show people because I was sure no one would believe me! But instead I just put it in the garbage.
after all there are only so many people you can say, "Look what I got out of my drain!" to.
I hope I don't get a call from Waste Management about the proper disposal of a "thing" of this magnitude. It probably requires burial. I thought there might be a book in this experience, don't laugh, they made a movie in 1958 called "The Blob" I should be able to cash in on this!

P.S. I hope no one read this before breakfast!

Food Series Continued

Remember when Penny Candy was all that the name implies? I could get Root Beer Barrels that would hardly fit in my mouth and then after I got them in, it was hard for my little kid's mouth to close so I always had this sticky, syrupy dribble. Black Jack Gum and Cinnamon gum! Those were the days! (am I sounding old yet?)
We were always admonished not to eat "too much" candy, "too much" was never an explicit measurable amount but we knew it was much less than what we wanted. "Too much" to a kid is when you are doubled over with a stomach ache, anything less than that is just right. We looked forward to holidays because those were "free" candy days, even the strictest of parents would let their kids indulge in sweet sinfulness. Especially Christmas and Easter, which are religious holidays, I still don't get the reasoning behind giving candy on those days, the only thing I can think of is maybe candy is a God-given right to children.

** Candy filled Easter baskets weren't popular until the late 1880's when manufactured candy became readily available.

** 15 Billion Jelly Beans are made for Easter, enough to cirle the earth 3 times if laid end to end,

I am very happy to announce that everything is 100% "Go Ahead" on my sister's house!!
She is sorting and packing and getting ready to have a household sale and then on to her new life in her beautiful new apartment. This is sort of a bittersweet time for her because although she is excited about this transition, she thinks of the circumstnces that brought this about.
(she also has to give up her pets which will allow her more freedom but she loves them so much)

Here is something I got in an e-mail:

4 years of age: My mommy can do anything!
8 years of age: My Mom knows a whole lot!
12 years of age: My Mother doesn't really know everything
16 years of age: Mother? She's hopelessly old-fashioned
18 years of age: That old woman? she's way out of date!
25 years of age: Well, she might know a little bit about it.
35 years of age: Before we decide, let's get Mom's opinion.
45 years of age: Wonder what Mom would have thought about it?
65 years of age: Wish I could talk it over with Mom.....

Happy Mother's Day!!!!
Don't forget to stop back tomorrow for the continuation of the Food series!

My earliest childhood memories regarding food was number one....it was good for you. The better you ate the better child you were, now we worry about our kids smoking or getting involved with drugs, then the only advice was "clean your plate". Even when we visited newborn babies, the mother was asked, "does he eat good?" If the answer was "Yes!" then everyone nodded and smiled, apparently a picky eater was the sign of a future trouble maker.
I was a picky eater and yet I have managed to remain out of jail. Kids were threatened with "You are going to sit there until all your vegetables are gone." Well, usually the vegetable were gone ok, fortunately the mother never stipulated gone WHERE, lucky was the kid that had an indoor dog. Thank God I didn't live in a household where you were told that what you didn't eat for supper you would get for breakfast. I guess some parents believed that cold, congealed, aged food was better for you than no food at all. I am glad that although my mother believed in proper nutrition, she also believed in refrigeration, therefore I was spared last night's supper for breakfast. Besides she had a whole new agenda for breakfast. Back in the '40's and '50's (and I'm sure before that but I have no personal experience before that era.) A great deal of your good health depended upon being "regular", therefore doses of the dreaded COD LIVER OIL! Yes, for the uninitiated, it IS as nasty as it sounds. We were given a glass of orange juice after the spoonful of cod liver oil to "kill the taste". HA! the taste of cod liver oil is unstoppable, it laughs at orange juice. And then breakfast consisted of shredded wheat, 4 oz glass of orange juice and 1/2 grapefruit or STEWED PRUNES! Yet another dish designed for the "regular" kid. The grown-ups got a cup of Postum.
Stop back tomorrow for lunch!

Food Fun

Once upon a time in South France, children were rewarded with gifts when they learned to say their prayers correctly. A monk in 610 A.D. made the first pretzel to give to youngsters, he designed the twist to represent arms in the attitude of prayer. In latin he called it "pretiola" meaning "little gift"

There is no sauce in the world like hunger
...Cervantes

Preservative: Something that makes food last longer than you will if you eat it.

"FOOD"

Hi Everybody!
I am going to start a series about my favorite subject, FOOD!
each day there will be a quotation or fun food facts, or just interesting (I think) things about food also some of my personal experiences with food. So be sure to stop back every day,
just put normasnews.blogspot.com in your favorites and then you can stop by and visit me easily.

I Got this in an e-mail

I went Saturday night and saw "Medea's Family Reunion", I recommend it,
it was a comedy, romantic drama. Bob worked yesterday and went for a run
when he got home. I did laundry and some shopping. I have to get groceries
today. Is this boring or what? I really don't have any news......check in later. Who wants to come to the pool this summer?

The ZOO!!!

Bob surprised me with a Zoo membership, we went this afternoon and spent about an hour and a half. It is so beautiful there, flower gardens, flowering trees. I feel close to God at the zoo, before you think I'm crazy, think about it, how can you look at all those animals, their odd looks, sizes and shapes and not think about The Great Engineer. Each one is specially made to suit their environment, whether they have tough hide or fur or feathers. My favorite is the Orangatans. The little baby cuddles up to his mother and they kiss and everyone watching says, "AAH" Little Children, Moms and Dads, Grandparents, Teen-agers, for that one moment we were all as one, total strangers brought together by one act of love between two animals.

Cinco de MAYO?

It's cinco de MAYO! Who ever heard of a holiday to celebrate a condiment? Was this Hellman's idea? Besides, I like ketchup and mustard better. I am NOT rushing out to buy greeting cards for this day! Oops! Bob just informed me that I am mistaken, Cinco de Mayo is the fifth of MAY! imagine my embarrassment!
(Excuse me, I will do a little more research before I go on my next rant.)

(this was a joke, folks, I didn't REALLY think it was about mayonnaise)

Why do some people think they have one-way glass in their windows? If you can see out, I can see IN!!
I'm talking about people who pile stuff in front of windows like people outside can't see all their "stuff". Another of my favorites is a big TV right in front of a nice picture window so everybody that drives by gets treated to a charming view of the BACK of their TV.
Back when Bob and I would go for aimless drives, my job was to critique all the houses because....well, that's what I do. I was always amazed at how many windows had curtains all askew or odd things sitting there for all the world to see, and don't even get me started about people that pick their noses at red lights! I don't know what got me started on this subject, sometimes something comes in my head and I have no choice but to let it out!!

Monday's Edition Addition

Thought for the day: Aspire to inspire before you expire.

We have heard so often the phrase, "Enjoy your children while they are young" that it seem to imply that they won't be so "enjoyable" as they get older. We are given twelve years to love and enjoy our children before they are turned into teen-agers. God planned it that way so after twelve years we would be sort of attached and allow them to live into young adulthood when they become "enjoyable" again.
Although it's true that adorable babyhood is so fleeting, there is a lot to be said for "old kids". I cherish the memories of those first smiles, first tooth, first steps and I get such a lump in my throat when I look at first grade pictues with those toothless grins, all these are long gone, never to be enjoyed again, but then there are other "firsts". First proms are as exciting as first steps, first jobs are as scary as the first day of kindergarten (except mom doesn't usually take your picture as you leave) The first ride mom takes with a new driver can remind her so much of the first time he rode his tricycle for a whole block alone. And how about that first grandchild!
Things are a lot different now and I AM enjoying the fact that the only time I have to get up in the middle of the night is if I have to take MYSELF to the bathroom.
Grown up kids are great. It really is more enjoyable when you have a son old enough to WORK on your car instead of just begging to drive it. And I love "doing lunch" with my daughters now that it doesn't involve pureed carrots. They can go to the rest room alone and better yet, they don't yell out to the whole restaurant what they just did when they come out.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is Yes, enjoy your babies but don't think that's all there is,you will be a parent your whole life and you will love and enjoy and worry and laugh and cry over that 40-year old every bit as much as your 4 year-old.