Friday Funnies

One size fits all . . .

Even with people ?

Cod Cakes with Scallions and Herbs

THANKS to all for comments left on Grenville’s recent post  recounting our first date. It was a very memorable date and one which bears annual celebration, which we do as Grenville & Beatrice and also as Pat & Dorothy.

Chicken is a dinner meal favorite at The Frog & PenguINN because of its versatility. Fish is a close second for meals so when I came across this recipe in a Food & Wine Cookbook, Quick from Scratch, last week we added cod fillets to our weekend shopping list and tonight these were the main dinner course.
Cod Cakes with Scallions and Herbs
This recipe was easy once all the chopping prep work was done. Prepare the Lemon Mayonnaise (see below) ahead of time. I used 1 lb. of cod fillet, but this recipe calls for 2 lbs., so if using less, adjust as necessary. Serves 4 as presented here.

• 2 lbs. cod fillet
• ¾ tsp salt
• 1-1/2 C bread crumbs
• ¼ C mayonnaise
• ¼ C lemon juice (best with fresh lemons)
• 1 egg, beaten to mix
• ½ red bell pepper, chopped fine
• 4 scallions, including green tops, chopped
• 2 TBSP chopped fresh basil (substituted dry)
• 2 TBSP chopped fresh parsley
• 1/8 tsp fresh ground black pepper
• Pinch cayenne

1. Put 1 inch of water in large frying pan. Add ¼ tsp of the salt and bring to simmer. Place cop in pan, cover and cook 6 minutes, until just done. Remove cod from water and cool. Pour out water and wipe pan.
2. Flake cod into a large bowl, removing any bones. Add ¾ C of bread crumbs, mayonnaise, lemon juice, egg, red pepper, scallions, basil, parsley, bail, cayenne and black pepper. Mix well until combined.
3. Divide cod mixture into 12 portions (fewer if you want larger cod cakes) and shape into patties. Coat them with remaining ¾ C of bread crumbs and pat off excess.
4. In frying pan, heat about ¼ inch of oil over moderate heat. Working in batches, if needed, fry cakes until golden brown and crisp, about 2 minutes. Turn over and fry on other side, about 2 minutes longer. Drain on paper towels. Serve with lemon mayonnaise.

Lemon Mayonnaise
Stir ingredients together in small bowl and put on cod cakes.

• ½ C mayonnaise
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• 1/8 tsp fresh ground black pepper

ENJOY ! (we did)

A Trip to the BIG CITY

Its not often we are willing to fork over the $17.00 to go 'cross the bay'. What was that???? Why $17.00????? That is the price you pay to spend almost 20 minutes riding on a cause way, over two bridges, and through two tunnels. An experience everyone needs at least once. The Cheasapeke Bay Bridge Tunnel. Its a trip!!!!!!
OK OK OK ... so why did we do this. Last week i found out that Garrison Keillor was doing his live radio show from the Old Dominion University campus in Norfolk (for you out of towers that is pronounced Naw-Fik).
What was that.... did I hear someone say "Who is Garrison 'whats his name' and what is a Prairie Home Companion????? Some sort of live-in help?????
To answer that question i will take the blurb directly from The Prairie Home Companion website.

Program Overview

Garrison Keillor

A Prairie Home Companion started production in 1974. Live every Saturday night from 5—7 p.m. CT, A Prairie Home Companion features comedy sketches, music, and Garrison Keillor's signature monologue, "The News from Lake Wobegon."

Host Bio

Garrison Keillor, Host and Producer
Garrison Keillor was born in 1942 in Anoka, Minnesota, and began his radio career as a freshman at the University of Minnesota, from which he graduated in 1966. He went to work for Minnesota Public Radio in 1969, and on July 6, 1974, he hosted the first broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion in St. Paul. Today, some 4 million listeners on more than 600 public radio stations coast to coast and beyond tune in to the show each week. Keillor has been honored with Grammy, ACE, and George Foster Peabody awards, the National Humanities Medal, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His many books include Lake Wobegon Days,The Book of Guys, Pilgrims: A Wobegon Romance, and Guy Noir and the Straight Skinny (Viking). He is the host of the daily program The Writer's Almanac and the editor of several anthologies of poetry, most recently,Good Poems: American Places (Viking). In 2006, Keillor played himself in the movie adaptation of his show, a film directed by Robert Altman. He has two grandsons and in 2007, he opened an independent bookstore, Common Good Books, in St. Paul, the city where he and his wife and daughter make their home.

If you need more about this Great American Phenomenon (sounds like a good tag line.... must send it off to GK), just go to The Prairie Home Companion website and click on the different songs and skits from last nights show. Listen to them with your eyes closed!!!!!! THEN think back to when you were a kid..... remember listening to radio shows?????

The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, Amos and Andy. YES YES.... on the radio before that television thing came along. Real live radio actors. They had to work hard to paint a mental picture for you.... Real Live Sound Effects instead of computer generated and ... AND REAL LIVE AUDIENCES. No canned laugh tracks. AND you had to use your imagination.  Come on,,, i know some of you remember......

Back to explanations::: OK so why all the expense and travel (1.5 hours each way from the F&P) to go see someone you may not have heard about??????  Well, May 16 is an anniversary for Beatrice and I. No not the wedding, thats in August. But a special event that set in motion a unique set of circumstances that has had a happy ever after ending. One that just keeps on giving all year long.....like a Jelly of the Month Club subscription (Think of the movie "Christmas Vacation").  I'll  tell you all about it next.
Till then, pop over to the The Prairie Home Companion website. Take a listen to the Adventures of Guy Noir. Catch up with the News from Lake Woebegone. Listen to some great music you will not find on regular radio.
While your doing that, I'm going to take the Peach Pie (tonights desert) out of the oven and have a cup of coffee with Beatrice.
Then I'll tell you what happened May 16, 1997. A day that may not live in 'infamy', except in my mind.

For this I say, 'twas a Special Day in May!!!!

NO NO, Don't worry, there is no poetry coming next. Well, at least not from me.....
I told you about the trip 'cross the bay' to see Garrison Keillor do a Live Radio performance of

Garrison Keillor

A Prairie Home Companion and that it was to celebrate an anniversary. But i never said an anniversary of what!!!!!

Back in 1997 i was trudging along as a single parent of two teenage daughters. One in college and one in high school. It was a simpler, slower time back then. A time of partial innocence. Of course that could have been my Seafood diet causing euphoria. A time before social networking removed all human, face to face, hand in hand contact. A time when you were still expected to woo the one you desired in a romantic quest to win her hand.... Ah yes, those were the days. Only thing I was missing was the white stallion and suit of armor.... but i digress as usual.

That January i discovered a web site called 'Web Personals". On a whim i wrote one and sent it out into the cybersphere. Not much happened, so i started reading some of the other posts. I won't add the details here of what ladies were looking for.... lets just say the life of a hermit was looking good. BUT, one post in particular caught my eye. I don't remember the whole thing but there was a line in it that was sort of

"I love to wander around hardware stores". YES.... like many of you guys out there, my ears perked up, my jaw dropped...... Hardware stores!!!!!! Visions of midnight strolls, hand in hand, through a 24 hour Home Depot began running wild in my imagination. Standing together admiring the power saws, having long discussions about the torque of the battery drills, fondling the same framing hammer handle. Be honest guys,,,,,, that's better than visions of sugar plums dancing in your head (a common delusion around Christmas time). I mean really guys, does it get  better than that????? His and Hers nail guns sharing the same compressor.

Before i knew it, I'd hit the SEND key. Oh my God. What had i done? What had i written?? Who had i written it to??? Well maybe she won't answer. Maybe.
But the next morning the answer in my email box. I just stared at it, unopened. Would she be a crazy? Would she have her own tools? Would her hammer be bigger than mine?? With trepidation I opened it and read. OMG, she was normal. She was looking for someone who would carry an ax, would run through a burning building to save her, would re-light her fire!!!! What a break.... all things i knew how to do.

This lead to a three times a day email affair. I like that term affair, it sounds so continental. Over the next three months we continued the e-mails and sort of played 20 questions. She asked me stuff, i asked her stuff. Likes, dislikes. And why bother lieing  about the answers. We may never even meet since our schedules seemed to be in opposite directions. Eventually we decided that we knew each other enough (we had covered family, home, jobs, likes and dislikes, books, movies, plays, music) that we should meet for lunch. You know, the 'Safe Date' where if things go bad you can make an escape. Have to get home to the kids, cat, sick friend, its my night to rearrange my sock drawer, something. The date took about two weeks to set up due to schedules.

FINALLY the date, time, and location was set. We traded phone numbers in case something went wrong and we had to cancel. On a whim (again) i called her the night before the Lunch Date. Up until then, neither of us had actually spoken before. We had never heard the others voice. Neither of us had sent the other one a picture of ourselves. I had thought of wearing a rose behind my ear so she would recognize me, but decided flamboyance might not be the best opening move. At least not on the first date. I mean she might have been faking this whole thing and been closer to normal than she sounded in her e-mails. She could have been stringing me along!!!!!

Father's Day Poster

Somerville Town Hall

SOOOO we met on Friday, May 16, 1997, at high noon. We both showed up packing stacks of pictures of people we had told each other about. Lunch stretched out to 3 hours. Next was a movie....we both liked Robin Williams and Billy Crystal so we saw "Fathers Day".  Yes, there was some hand holding. I forget who started it. One of the nice things about where she lived was their Friday Evening Concert series at the Town Hall Green. That night just happened to be a Jazz group. Did i mention we both like jazz??? So we decided to go there next. BUT first she had to stop home. I don't remember the reason, but it was something in the basement. Once there she went down to take care of this thing. I figured everything was going well since she let me see where she lived, and let me inside, and left me alone upstairs. Did i mention that she was just as much fun in real life as in cyber land????? Well she was. Anyhow, she called me to come down to the basement. By this time my mind was swirling. Finding someone i liked and that seemed to like me. Who liked the same things I did. Was this real. I was in a daze. The next thing i knew i was in the basement getting kissed. YES, getting kissed. And not just a little peck on the cheek either. A serious, full fledged kiss. AND I WAS KISSING BACK!!!!! AND I LIKED IT...... A LOT!!!!!

Beachwood Marina

Well this is getting long and i'm sure you see where it is going.... and you already know the ending, so i'll condense a little. The concert was good. That led to dinner, which led back to her place, which led to talking, and..... well you know. First date lasted 14 hours. I guess she liked me.
I had to work the next day but invited her to go sailing with me on Sunday. Unfortunately the weather turned nasty and that is not the time to take someone sailing for the first time. SOOO a bottle of wine and some snacks at the dock were the order of the day. Then dinner, and take her home. Did i mention that we lived about an hour and a half apart???? Wine, food, and driving can really wear you out, so i stayed over. Second date lasted 19 hours. Now i knew she really liked me.

Third date was a weekend in Providence RI for my older daughters first graduation. Sixteen years later here i am retelling the story. And loving it more each time. AND it all started on May 16, 1997. That is the reason for the celebration.
Grenville

Blooming at the F&P

A recent post described yard work that Grenville and myself have been doing around The Frog & PenguINN. Here’s what’s been blooming, despite a return of very un-spring like weather.

COLORFUL annuals in flower pots on the front and back patios and some perennials in the front flower beds have started in bloom.

Pinks and reds . . .

Purple and white . . .







Also been a LOT of green and yellow . . . 

Pollen season is here (and everywhere).

How are your flowers and/or gardens doing?

Friday Funnies

Motorist putting the horse motor behind the cart car?

Most folks would just carry a spare tire.

Further curiosity about the expression putting the cart before the horse produced this explanation:

Reverse the accepted order of things; setting up steps out of order and working in a confused manner; putting things in the wrong order…putting something inconsequential before something more essential . . .

Sleuthing further produced more interesting (at least to me) background about the expression — putting the cart before the horse — and others:

• Putting on ones shoes and socks (Iris Murdoch)
• The tail is wagging the dog
• He is well and lives
• Bred and born
• Let us die, and charge into the thick of the fight (Aeneid of Virgil)
• I’m going to kill that magician . . . dismember him and then sue him (Woody Allen in New York Stories)

ALL are examples of a rhetorical device (figure of speech in grammatical terms) known as hysteron proteron in which the conventional order of words, actions, or ideas is reversed. This calls attention to the more important item by placing it first.
The term hysteron proteron derives from the Greek: ὕστερον πρότερον, hýsteron próteron defined as “latter before” and its first known use was in 1565.
And that, to borrow the famous signoff from late American broadcaster Paul Harvey is The Rest of the Story. (actually there is lots more info online IF you are interested.)
All that from a fun photo shot on a road trip!
ENJOY your weekend folks — we’re going on a 1-day road trip show to celebrate an upcoming special date.

Time for A(nother) Change

No, this is not Tinkering, OK maybe it really is but when the Who can Comment? setting was reset to Anyone this week, those REALLY annoying Anonymous comments started again. Seems that  spammers have nothing to do but send out those ridiculous Anonymous comments — all get deleted by us before even being published. Did I mention how they are REALLY REALLY annoying as most fellow bloggers already know.

Who can comment?

• Anyone - includes Anonymous Users
• Registered User - includes OpenID
• User with Google Accounts
• Only members of this blog

An earlier change to User with Google Accounts unfortunately excluded some great blogger friends like Christer (The Cottage by the Crane Lake Part Two) who don’t use Gmail from posting a comment. Those folks can still read the posts, just not comment.

Grenville and I really really enjoy reading everyone’s comments BUT the Anonymous ones while being bothersome,  take time to delete and we would MUCH rather be doing other things when online like posting or reading your posts.

To all fellow bloggers who left comments on the previous post about this issue; most preferred Registered User.

Who can Comment? has been changed to that — so Take that Anonymous

Barn Collapse “Fun” (no injuries)

Recent posts have been concerned with house selling, yard work, on-line issues, so today it time for some photo phun, sorry FUN.

Last week, I photographed this old barn because as Mad Snapper Sandra often says, “I could.”  It’s been collapsing for the past few year and despite storms is remarkably STILL standing.

Taking this photo into Picasa and 5 minutes of playing, sorry meant to say artistic changes produced these . . .

Pencil sketch with neon for that “blue” feeling. Then on a colorful note, Heat Map was applied in the next photo.

Same image in black and white with added contrast and in sepia with wood grain effect.

Last one is the original again with fine tuning, highlights, shadows all applied with a few mouse clicks in Picasa and Reflections selected in Live Writer.

OK, my excuse for this doodling photofun was that it’s the 1st day of the month, which means bill paying in the a.m. Thank goodness, there’s still some $$ left in the checkbook for fun stuff (more on that in a weekend post).

What have YOU been doing for fun, phun, silly stuff ?
(Sandra, I already know you’re always having photofun.)

Lesson Learned — Don’t Tinker

Sometimes the less known about something, the better and leaving well enough alone can be the best thing to do.

WHY? Fellow bloggers commenting on a recent Working in the Yard post said:

Montanagirl ...  Everything looks nice, but I see a lot of ovals with a white line through them....Exactly what are those? Maybe it's supposed to be a photo there or something.
Elaine ... I see the same thing as Mona, with only four photos coming through, and the last several posts have reverted to the same thing.

Anvilcloud ... I also saw that oval on one pic in Reader, but they're all here on your actual site. 

WHAT HAPPENED?

I tinkered in Picasa Web Albums last night, deleting photos as there were many duplicates — at the time didn’t know that doing so ALSO deletes the photo (in this case many photos) from any blog posts in which they have been used.

 

This online definition of tinker describes why this was NOT a good thing to do:

Verb - Attempt to repair or improve something in a casual or desultory way, often to no useful effect.
v.intr. - To make unskilled or experimental efforts at repair; fiddle: tinkered with the engine, hoping to discover the trouble; to manipulate unskillfully or experimentally.

Luckily, I was able to locate images from this recent post and some older ones on my computer and was able to repost them.

Thanks to those fellow bloggers for letting me know about my goof.

UPDATE: An earlier post When Nothing is Said  discussed setting the choices for Comments — comments choices in Blogger are:

Who can comment?

• Anyone - includes Anonymous Users
• Registered User - includes OpenID
• User with Google Accounts
• Only members of this blog

Forgot to mention in that post that I reset to Anyone as the previous option of  User with Google Accounts excluded folks without a Gmail account. BUT, now we’re getting some of those VERY annoying Anonymous comments again, which is WHY the option was changed, so just wondering . . .

Would Registered User – includes OpenID be a better choice ?

Seeking others thoughts BEFORE tinkering (again).

Working in the Yard

Curb appeal is a BIG item for home sellers and that’s WHY we’ve been spending lots of outdoor time the past couple of weeks at The Frog & PenguINN.

Edging was done around all the front flower beds. Not many of the perennials are in bloom yet, but a few weeks there will be day lilies blooming in the front yard. Meanwhile, annuals were planted in several pots on the back patio and front porch and these are already in bloom.


See the photo below — it shows weeding done around the back patio and wildflower gardens — did I mention there was a LOT of wedding to do? All 3 of the backyard mulch bins were in use.  The vegetable garden was also cleared and turned.Besides the yard work, Grenville re-stained the back deck and power washed and repainted the back patio enclosure.  We’re expecting pears, peaches and apples from the back orchard — the blooms have been plentiful and beautiful this year.
Apples, peach and pear blossoms . . .

The 2 strawberry patches are also loaded with blossoms and Grenville and I are already planning on strawberry shortcake !

The back patio and wildflower gardens are not yet blooming. Daytime temperatures have gone from mid-70s to 60s the past couple of weeks, so everything has slowed down a bit — except the weeds. 

Hope you are enjoying Spring IF it’s arrived yet — we’re hoping it returns before the Summer heat and humidity gets here.