Garlic for the Masses

Garlic is a well known staple in many cultures.  You can't be Italian unless you love garlic almost to the point of dousing one self in its' juices.  The one cuisine I don't connect garlic to is Chinese.

I had no idea that China is one of the largest exporters of Garlic in the world until I read about two Brits wanted for garlic smuggling.  They smuggled millions of dollars in garlic bulbs from China, through the Netherlands and beyond.  Looks like the mere odor would have given them away.  Garlic smuggling out of China is popular because it is a cheap source of the fragrant bulb.  Garlic is economical enough through more expensive sources I can't imagine how many bulbs and cloves a million plus dollars of Chinese garlic would be.   Imagine the gallons upon gallons of spaghetti sauce, pesto or scampi you could make.  You could also make hundreds maybe even thousands of garlands to ward off all the vampires springing up in movies and on TV.  Until next time go by the garlic display at your local produce stand and breath in the aroma, it can take you all the way to China and beyond.

Dropping in the New Year

Most of us have watched the glittering ball in Times Square take the plunge into the new year.
There is a town in North Carolina that has its' own unique tradition.  The tradition has come under fire this year as being cruel to animals.

Brasstown, North Carolina celebrates the new year with an opossum drop at mid-night. I can see it now on Hillbilly Holiday.  It reminds me of a Thanksgiving episode on "WKRP In Cincinnati" when Les dropped turkeys from a helicopter as a promotional gimmick.  What Les didn't know, turkeys don't fly, so the birds landed, non too gently, onto the parking lot below.  At least the opossum has a fighting chance in his clear box that is gently lowered to the ground. 

The organizers have decided to use a stuffed (toy) opossum to appease the protests from animal rights groups.  It was also suggested that they use road-kill in place of a live opossum.  I vote for the stuffed version, that way no matter which way the wind blows spectators won't have to hold their noses. 

Take a few minutes to think about your New Years traditions.  I'm making my new years resolutions as I do every year.  I'm big on recycling so I'll be using the ones I had last year and the year before and the year before that...you get the picture.  Make sure no critters are hurt in your tradition and don't be afraid to try new things.  Until next time beware of falling opossum's, turkeys and anything else that drops out of the sky at mid-night New Year's Eve.

My Dream Car

A few posts back I talked about technology in the Jetson's catching up to reality.  Well, technology has once again caught up to my imagination.

We all have our dream car.  When I was younger, and by younger I mean pre-driving age, my dream car was a Mercedes Coupe.  I thought they were the cats meow.  When I reached driving age my dream car became anything that ran. 

As a child I would ride in the back of our family station wagon and use the vents as steering wheels and microphones.  I would start my engine and tell the car where to take me and off we went.

I heard on the news a few weeks back that my new idea of a dream car is about to become a reality.  I was born with several eye conditions that make sharing the road with other drivers at night, well, it isn't a good idea.  I also have difficulty reading signs, so driving in unfamiliar places is frustrating.  All of this is about to change.

We already have a car that will parallel park itself, something I could use when trying to squeeze my F-150 into a space meant for a mini coupe.  The next logical step was to develop a car that will drive itself.  I heard this and watched the story.  The possibilities flashed before my eyes.  I would no longer be dependant on others if I wanted to go out at night.  Unfamiliar streets would no longer be a problem as long as the GPS information was up-to-date.  I would be free to roam where I wanted and when I wanted. 

I thought of what this would mean to older drivers.  They could continue driving on their own keeping their Independence.  People who go out and celebrate could get home safely, well as long as they could remember where to tell the car to take them.  The possibilities for this new age technology is endless.  I don't know how much this new auto is going to sell for, but I plan to pay the price and think it is worth every dollar.

A Balanced Life

We hear a lot about keeping balance in our lives, Yen versus Yang.  Example, all work and no play makes _________a ____________.  You fill in the blanks.  If we want good health and longevity, we need to balance diet with exercise. 

I like keeping a balanced household.  We have two dogs, one twelve year old female and one young two year old dude.  A female cat that is small and dainty and a younger tom we refer to as our mountain lion.  All balanced between young and old, male to female and big to small.

My husband and I balance, he needs to gain weight while I need to lose it.  Now if only those treatments that claim to melt fat could magically melt it off me and inject it where he needs it.  Our habits are in balance, he puts things away and I simply leave them where they lay.

My inner thermometer runs hot and his runs cold.  In the summer you can find him wearing sweats with a knit cap on his head while I’m sitting there in a bathing suite or shorts.

I keep our meals balanced, I try to have a meat, a starch and something green.  My mother taught me how to keep pies and cakes balanced by trimming off any uneven edges. 

Even our respective families balance each other.  He comes from a large Catholic family while I come from a small Presbyterian one.  His family reunion filled a hotel while mine couldn’t fill a port-a-potty. 

Balance is good.  By staying balanced we stay on the narrow tight-rope of life, but if you think about it, it’s the unbalanced ones that fall and hit the net to experience life outside the box.

Until next time, do what I do as I’m evening up the edge of an Apple Pie popping the trimmed edge into my mouth; tell yourself it’s only fruit.




















 

Technology Catches Up With The Jetsons

Remember the The Jetsons?  They were the space-age family on Saturday morning who traveled in the family saucer, had a robot for a maid and talked on phones with video and audio capabilities. 

We may not have flying saucers for transportation but we do have cars that park themselves, tell us if there is a door open or if you have a tire low on air.  If you have a GPS to find how to get from point A to point Z, just say your desired destination out loud and a voice gives you detailed directions on how to get there.  It even tells you if you missed a turn or went the wrong way.  I understand it is just a matter of time before we have cars that will actually do the driving for us.  I remember as a child sitting in the back of the family wagon pretending to punch in an address and the car took me to where I wanted to go.  Who would have thunk it would come true some day.  I was a visionary without knowing.

The average family may not have a robot maid like Rosie but many families have a Romba, a little robotic floor sweeper that keeps dirt from accumulating.  I imagine they provide entertainment for the family cat as well. 

Now that we have Skype, you can see and talk to friends and family at the same time.  The first time we skyped with our daughter at college we sat the laptop on the coffee table.  Our dog Angel jumped up, tail wagging when she heard Susan's voice.  Thinking Susan was in the room Angel started looking for her.  She stared at the laptop with a puzzled look on her face.  Then she looked under the table and behind the laptop.  When she couldn't find Susan she went back to her favorite resting spot and resumed her nap.

Cell phones have come a long way in the past four years.  We recently up-graded our phones.  The ones we had were three to four years old and way behind in technology.  My husband and daughter chose smart phones.  I went with what I called a dumb phone, no Internet or fancy features like voice to text messaging.  I'd be happy with a Jitterbug made and designed for seniors.  My phone does have a few perks, I can take pictures and video and it has a touch screen that makes changing settings easier and faster.  My husbands new phone can follow voice commands, turn spoken words into a text message, download movies, music, e-mail, you name it, it can do it.  The sad part is by next week technology will have advanced again leaving us in the dark.

Until next time, remember, the sky's the limit which means there is no limit since the sky goes on through space for infinity. 

Comments Please!!!

Like most writers there is a part of me that knows what I write is passable but deep in a hidden recess of my brain there is still a small nagging voice that asks, "Do people enjoy what I write?

If you read any of my blog entries, let me know what you think,  even if it's a simple, like or I don't get it.  Writer's can only grow stronger by having feedback. You, my audience, are my critique group for Fruit to Nuts.  Please, critique away.  Until next time, help make a child a reader, let them see you reading a book, magazine, blog post or report.

Black Holes

There have been several stories of late involving the new frontier.  A man donned a space suite and ascended to the brink of space in a souped up balloon, then parachuted back to Earth.  The mere thought puts my vertigo into hyper-drive.  I constantly tell my husband, "If you ever want to get rid of me and have it look natural. put me on a roller-coaster.  I'll be dead from a heart attack with-in the first two minutes, maybe less."
My home is an inter-active model of Space.  There is a debris field floating around waiting to smack you in the face and aliens who have taken over the bodies of my cats and dogs so they can observe a "normal" Earth family.  Then, there's the Black Hole.  I can't see it, black holes are invisible but I know it's there.  In the last year I have had two sets of truck keys disappear.  You say, "Don't you mean lost?"  No, vanished, gone, vaporized...  I have torn my house apart by putting things away and recycling countless pounds of paper.  No keys. I emptied the black hole that is my purse, no keys.   I know they should be there, I had to have them in order to drive home.  I have looked under furniture, in pockets on the ground.  No keys. 
Other items have gone missing in the past.  A couple of years ago a can of varnish vanished without a trace.  The aliens must have finished with it because I found it years later in a flower bed.  I had no idea that space aliens had teeth that left dents like a canine.  Wait, I said the aliens had taken over my dogs and cats, so that explains the teeth marks.
I keep waiting for the black hole to spit back my keys.  I had to have a new key made so I would have wheels.  A new key with micro-chip, without an existing key to program from is painfully expensive.  If I didn't need wheels now, I would have waited for a cheaper solution, going on an inter-galactic space hunt.

Until next time, keep your keys close and your eyes telescoped on your cats and dogs, they are out there watching our every move.