Mid Week Humor

Okay, so this is more of an end of the week humor than mid-week humor but it's still good. As you readers know (and my entire social circle) of my deep love for all things redneck I'm sharing a redneck joke with you today. Hilarious!



Redneck Driver's License Application

Last name: ________________

First name (check appropriate box):

[_] Billy-Bob
[_] Bobby-Sue
[_] Billy-Joe
[_] Bobby-Jo
[_] Billy-Ray
[_] Bobby-Ann
[_] Billy-Sue
[_] Bobby-Lee
[_] Billy-Mae


One more little redneck saying: You know you're a redneck if you have a "parts" tractor.

I am not saying we have one of these.....

Living out in the country with a good chuck of open space seems to invite the need to fill the space. Much like stretchy waist pants. If you wear stretchy waist pants often enough, it doesn't take long before they aren't stretchy anymore.


Anyway, one day out of the blue George called me up from his job site and said. "I bought a garden tractor today. Don't worry if you see a guy dropping one off in the yard". Hmmm, that's not something most women want to hear on the spur of the moment. Especially after I heard the words "parts tractor". "Parts" cars, tractors, what-have-yous are the start of every rural junkyard. Thankfully George curbed his junkyard aspirations and promptly fixed the tractor and it now in fully functioning form and he uses it regularly.

Menu Plan Monday

Remember Salmon Patties? Salmon Patties made a fairly regular appearance at the dinner table during my childhood but it's not something I think to make very often. Do you have meals you like to eat but don't think of them when planning your menu?

This week, I scored a bunch of salmon pouches on a great clearance price at Meijer so I stocked up and plan to serve salmon patties about once a month now. The best thing about Salmon in the pouches is that it is just that -- salmon: not skin, bones, etc. Here's this week's menu with a link to my salmon patty recipe.



Monday

Chicken Fajitas topped with guac, tomatoes, salsa, sour cream, lettuce and cheese

Tuesday

Salmon Patties topped with a light cucumber dill dressing (sorry, no recipe for the dressing -- we use light Miracle Whip, shredded cucumber, 1 tbsp of milk and a liberal amount of dill)

Fresh green beans from our garden

Baked Sweet Potatoes


Wednesday

Sloppy Joes, Oriental Cabbage Salad

Thursday

Grilled Pork Chops, Squash, Fresh Peas from the garden

Friday

Hawaiian Pizza


This post is linked to Org Junkie.

My Mom's Top 5 Rules for Kids

Ivy over at Home Ec 101 has a fabulous post up entitled Mom's Rules and How I Broke Them (And Why She Was Right). Here's a little snippet:



I’m sure it doesn’t surprise anyone to learn that when I was a kid, I’d break the rules as much as possible. Finally, to keep peace in the house, I stopped breaking so many rules, but I vowed that when I had my own house, I’d not have any of those same rules. Now that I’m an adult, I’ve spent some time breaking those rules and I’ve learned that most (not all!) of them had a really good reason for it. Let’s take a look.

“Don’t stand and stare into the refrigerator”


This might have been the one thing my mom and I fought the most about. If I spent more than 30 seconds staring into the fridge, mom would be on me like white on rice, yelling at me not to stand around staring into the refrigerator. Naturally, the first thing I did when I got a house of my own, is open my refrigerator and stand there staring into it for as long as I felt like it.


The truth is, it really does let the cold out, and you shouldn't stand around staring into the fridge. But how are you going to decide what to eat without opening the refrigerator?



Click here to read the full post.


All moms have rules, don't they? My mom had about a gazillion and one rules, but let me preface that statement: My mom is one of the easiest going, laid back moms out there; she was never one of those cranky-always yelling-perfectionist type moms. (Oh thank you, Lord) but she had to have rules, otherwise the whole house would've been chaos. Usually when you think of "rules" you think of a mean taskmaster that is all about don't do this, you must do that, etc. I don't ever remember Mom being like that, (or Daddy) for that matter.



Anyway, I thought it would be fun to list a few of mom's rules below. (Be sure to visit Home Ec 101 and check out my comment about Mom's Corn on the Cob rule that I have violated since I first moved out. )

#1. The children do not run the home or the parents.

This was never spelled out to us kids in these exact words, but trust me it was a rule. It was also the rule that Mom stuck to the most. We were never allowed to dictate where the family would go or when we would go, we also did not dictate mealtimes, menus or family activities. That was our parents realm of authority. (We of course, did get to do lots of fun things, it's just that we didn't get to have a lot of say about the particulars). Also, visits with family and friends did not revolve around keeping us kids entertained. Sounds pretty harsh by today's standards doesn't it. I wonder if so many parents are at wit's end because are catering to every whim of their children.

#2. If you are bored, you get a job.

Each summer, it wasn't long before the Mommmmmm I'm boooooored! whine started. My mom mush have been so sick of hearing this -- I even used to get tired of hearing myself say it. One year, she quietly institute the policy of giving us a job to do if we whined about being bored. It took us a few times to catch on, but after that we started finding creative ways to keep ourselves busy and mom got to enjoy a day blessedly free from the drone of several children whining "I'm booored!"


#3. Obey the 1st time.

This one also sounds pretty harsh by today's standards. We were expected to obey our parents the very first time they asked us to do something. This meant coming the first time we were called, if we started to whine and pitch a fit in public we had to stop the first time they told us to. We also had to get started on whatever chore they asked us to do without them begging us for 10 minutes. I get the feeling there were probably lots of exemptions to this rule when we were quite young, because we were still learning. But once we got a little older, this was just understood -- our parents never said anything like "you must obey me the very first time" -- it was just understood and it wasn't a big issue for us.


One other thing about this "rule" that kind of relates to another unspoken rule: we were expected to have a good attitude about life, we were not be mean, sour, bratty or inconsiderate to other children, neighbors, our parents, and visitors to our home. We were also expected to have a good attitude about chores and school work. Again, like the obey rule, this was never jammed into our heads by our parents constantly harping on it. We learned this by the example our parents set day in and day out. The old adage, more is caught than taught is so true. Decades later my mom is still a cheerful, pleasant lady with a good attitude about life -- she has the prettiest smile and she uses it often. It's a real honor when old family friends tell me I'm just like my mom.

#4 Never Hurt An Animal.

We raised hogs primarily, but we also raised chickens, goats, sheep, ducks, geese, dogs, puppies -- you name it -- we had it at one time or another. I loved them all. From the time we could stand, us kids were allowed to "help" take care of all the animals. We especially liked to play with the baby animals because they were so cute and little. We were allowed plenty of play time, but we were were held to very strict rules of not hurting the babies or disturbing the adults to the point that they hurt us. This one was really tough for me, because I think I was the most taken with animals and would've lived out in the barn if allowed to. It was incredibly hard to not handle the babies too much -- they were so cute!

#5 Sunday afternoon is Nap Time

Sunday was a day of rest in our home. After lunch everyone was expected to lie down and take a nap or quietly rest for about an hour or so. With a houseful of busy kids my mom and dad probably looked forward to this time all week. It was the only time I ever saw my Mom lay down during waking hours, save the times she was really sick. This was a really difficult rule for me to keep. I had so much energy, I remember nap time as pure torture. I used to sneak outside under the pretense of having to go to the bathroom (remember, we had an outhouse).

Now that I'm an adult, Sunday nap time is something I relish.

Mid Week Humor

Speaking to a Mother's Heart

Calling all you moms out there -- or really anyone that could use a little pick me up.

Shannon over at RocksinmyDryer has a wonderful little tid bit of encouragement here. It's all about taking life one day at a time.

Are you a Morning Person or a Night Owl?

Laura over at Heavenly Homemakers has a great post up about morning people and night owls. Laura's post really struck a chord with me because it describes George and I to a T. Each of us is literally incoherent at our non peak times -- for George that is early in the morning and for me around 10 at night. It's just something that cannot be helped, no matter how hard we try.

Here's a little snippet:


"Matt is very much a night owl, which sometimes makes life interesting…since he can complete sentences after 10:00 and I can’t. Oh, you should hear some of our conversations. They’re very productive. As are the conversations we have at 7 am. "


Go here to read the rest of Laura's post and weigh in on the morning person/night owl question.


I am a morning person and have always been. George -- he's a night owl and there is just no changing either of us. Adjusting to our different "wide-awake-and-fully functioning" times has required a lot of effort from both of us. More specifically, we've had to learn to not take offense when the other is so tired and drained that they are incoherent. Along the way, we've had a lot of misunderstandings and lots of funny episodes.

George has learned to not take it personally when I can barely function at 10pm. This took a long time, because he is so wide awake and alert at this hour he couldn't begin to imagine why I can't do my best thinking then. Seriously, he could tell me that we won the lottery at this time of night and I would say "that's nice honey", and go right back to sleep. This is the time when George usually settles down to some intensive study about the intricacies of boiler mechanics or refrigeration -- something I can't begin to understand even when I'm wide awake. I can barely figure out how to program the coffee pot for the next day at this hour.

By the same token, I've learned to not take offense when I get up for the day and tell George to have a good day and that I love him before I leave and all I get in response is a grunt. That took a while, let me tell you. But to be fair, if he tells me he loves me after I'm asleep, the only reply I can give is a muffled mmrrgrrrph. Earlier this summer, George had just gotten in to bed and then jumped up, turned the light on and started tearing off the blankets and sheets. All my sleeping brain could make out of that was, "I hope it's nothing that's going to kill me, because I just can't open my eyes and wake up." Turns out, he found a giant bug in the bed. In. The. Bed. After he told me this, I still lay there hoping there weren't any more and if there were, that they wouldn't bite. I was that out of it. Normally, the thought of a bug crawling around in bed with me would be cause for major alarm.

I've also learned that on the rare occasions when George cannot get started on his IV coffee drip first thing in the morning, it is a disaster of national importance. I wholeheartedly agree with him how horrible it is that he has to wait an hour or two for coffee and offer lots of sympathy. While, it's no big deal for me to miss a morning coffee, it is monumental for George, so I try to be understanding. After all, he is very understanding of my inability to drive at night. It's not because I can't see, it's because I will most assuredly fall asleep within 10 minutes. That man, he values his life.

How about you? Are you a morning or night person?

Menu Plan Monday

Sunday

Hot Ham & Cheese Sandwiches, Pasta Salad

Monday

Grilled Pork Chops, Squash, Broccoli

Tuesday

Hot Dogs, Baked Beans, Deviled Eggs

Wednesday

Chinese Take Out

Thursday

Beef Pot Pie, Garden Salad, Squash


Friday

Chicken Fajita Pizza

This post is liked to Org Junkie

Frugal Friday: Grow Your Own Food and Grow Your Savings

Today over at LifeasMOM, FishMama wrote about making the most of seasonal produce for her Frugal Friday series. I thought I would share about how we save money by growing a lot of our food. My husband and I are big believers in producing our own food. We do it primarily because we love to grow things, but saving a bundle of money is a very nice bonus.

What's Our Garden Like?

At the end of May I wrote about putting in this year's garden and how we are using a new weed free gardening technique. I am delighted to report that a month and a half later our garden is still virtually weed free and the plants are all coming along very nicely. So this year, we are not only saving money, we are spending very little of our free time to grow our own fruits and vegetables.

We live on a small country property where there is plenty of room to grow a wide variety of produce. If you live on a small city lot, do not be discouraged. For many years I lived in the city and found ways to grow lots of tasty vegetables -- I grew them all along the fence and in the foundation beds around the house. Take heart, it can be done!

A lot of our produce comes from our large farm garden. Sure, we still buy lots of produce at the store, (especially this time of year, before our produce is ripe) but we also grow quite a bit ourselves, which adds up to quite a good cost savings. In a month, we won't be shelling out a dime for tomatoes, green beans, beets, cucumbers, sweet corn, peas, onions or peppers. The extras will be prepared for storage so we can eat them over the winter. You can read about how we store onions here. We also share lots of our extras with family and friends.

Other Ways We Get Fresh Produce

In addition to our garden, we also rely on our mulberry trees, blackberry thickets, walnut trees, and rhubarb patch for a harvest that comes up to several hundred dollars worth of produce. We use the fruit to make all kinds of desserts and jam. The extras are frozen for later use and shared with friends. We have many black walnut trees on our property and each year, I'll collect a bucket full of the nuts, clean and crack them them open so the nutmeats can be picked out and stored. Black Walnuts are great to eat plain, but are also delicious in baked goods.

We are also blessed by many of my husband's customers that generously share their bounty with us. Many times in the fall, George will come home with a sack of pears or a bucket of apples. With something like this we will eat all we can fresh and then I make up the rest into desserts for the freezer or jam.

What about Meat?

It is possible to grow/hunt/catch your own meat for much less than it is to buy it. Plus you usually get a much better product. Hunting or catching your own meat is by far the cheapest method; it also nets you some of the lowest fat meat -- even the "fatty" cuts of meat are not fatty in game.

Here's a real life example:
Last night we ate a pound and a half of Walleye fillets that cost us nothing. My Father-in-law gave the fish to us, because we didn't have very good luck on our fishing trip. If we paid this week's sale price it would've cost us $11.98.

Here's another example: my oldest sister has 7 children and cost of milk was getting to be astronomical. Now, all their milk comes from a herd of goats. They've ran the numbers; the cost of maintaining the herd is far less than buying cow's milk from the store. Plus, they use the extra milk to make Goat's Milk Soap to sell.

Another sister and her family all hunt and fish. For about $100 worth in license fees, they get several hundred dollars worth of wild turkey, wild boar, venison, phesant and fish to feed their family. These meats are all natural, organic, and low fat -- healthier than most meat you could ever buy in the store. George and I are recipients of the generosity of my sister and her husband. We always look forward to a few dinners of roast pheasant every time they go on a hunt.

How Much Money Do We Really Save?

We've never kept any kind of a record of how much money we save by growing a portion of our food. A good rule of thumb to calculate the savings from using your own produce is to look at what you are eating at a particular meal and note how much it would cost you if you bought the item at the grocery store. For example: This week I used 4 cups of blackberries and 2 cups of rhubarb to make this dessert. Even at sale prices, this fruit would've cost me close to $10.

When calculating the savings from growing, raising, catching, hunting your own food, it is really important to factor in what it costs you to produce your own food. It is entirely possible to spend a fortune on your garden, your livestock and hunting and fishing licenses (and equipment). You could easily end up spending far more to produce your own food than you would spend if you bought everything from a store.

However, many people that produce a good share of their own food, look upon the task as a quality of life issue. Even if it costs more, they would still do it because they enjoy doing it, because it's become a hobby.

George and I are not big spenders when it comes to producing our own food. We don't go all out, nor do we buy all the latest gadgets that commercials tell us we need. Our costs are surprisingly low. Just now I did a quick estimate of what we pay to put in and keep up our garden, our fishing and hunting licenses and related supplies each year. It comes in at just under $300, which is far less than the value we receive in return. It's not all about the money we save, either. We get to enjoy lots of fresh air and exercise as we work together on a common goal. We also enjoy being able to bless others with the fruits of our labors.

Mid Week Humor

Menu Plan Monday

Sunday

Grilled Hamburgers, Corn on the Cob, Baked Beans

Monday

Sloppy Joes, Grilled Asparagus, Garden Salad

Tuesday

Grilled Pork Chops, Red Potatoes in Sour Cream & Dill Sauce, Carrots

Wednesday

Chinese Takeout (I will be having the Cashew Chicken and George will get the Sweet & Sour Pork, and of course we will get some egg rolls...)

Thursday

Baked Walleye, Broccoli and Red Potatoes

Friday

Cheeseburger Pizza

This post is linked to Org Junkie

The View From Our Place and Request for Garden Help

I hope you had a lovely July 4th holiday. On Friday I went to visit my mom and do some errands. We stayed home for the rest of the weekend and worked in the yard and garden. Even though we worked hard, we did manage to have a bon fire and grill some hamburgers. Here are a few photos taken after all the hard work was done.




Here's a shot of what I think is Purple Salvia at the corner of the front porch. The hummingbirds love it. Speaking of hummingbirds... All of the nesting hummingbird pairs on our property have had their babies and boy are they ever hungry! We are going through about 8 cups of sugar water a week. I just love sitting out by the feeder watching them swoop in for a quick meal.

Here are the two tomato plants we are babying. These are the plants I picked up early in the season (which for us is the 2nd week of May). I planted them up close to the house so I could cover them each night. The left one has really taken off and has several clusters of green tomatoes. The right one took some mole damage and half the plant is down. It also didn't help that I planted this guy too close to a mum, so it didn't get as much water and nutrients as it needed.A couple of weeks ago we dug it up and put it in a bucket to prevent the moles from further damaging the roots.

See the rustic trellis? George made two of these for me this year. We've got morning glories coming up at the base of each leg. Usually we sit just to the right of the large tomato plant and watch the hummingbirds at the feeder.

See this giant round circle of dirt. The previous owners used this as their fire pit. It's about 14 feet in diameter -- they must have had some really big fires. Nothing will grow there. I mean absolutely nothing. We even transplanted some weedy type grass and it's not taking off.

I need your help.

This weekend we finally decided to give up on trying to grow grass in this area and that we (I) could do whatever I wanted with it. Here are the two things I would love to do with this space

1.) Fill it in with mulch (or stones) and then put a piece of old fashioned farm machinery in the center. On the sides will be small 1/2 whiskey barrel tipped on their sides with mounds of wave petunias spilling out. Go here to see plantings similar to what I'm talking about. You can go here, here and here to see the old farm machinery I'm thinking of.

2.) Fill it in with mulch (or stones) and then put an antique wagon in the center. I would then fill the wagon with all kinds of flowers, making sure to include some vines that would trail down the sides to the ground. Go here, and here and here to see this kind of a wagon, this one looks like a manure spreader, but it would do.

The key here is to have some kind of vertical element. Preferably something that says "old fashioned country life" and lots of flowers. In the fall it would look so nice to do a harvest theme with corn stalks, straw bales and pumpkins. The only problem is I don't have any old wagons or plows lying around. I plan to check with all the neighbors to see if they know of any, and I'll run an ad in the local paper. I thought about asking George to make me a wagon, or at least a very large wheel borrow out of old wood, but his free time is very limited right now.

Here's where you can help -- please share any ideas of how I can make this circle a showpiece and creative ways for obtaining the supplies. Please leave your ideas in the comment section or email me. Thank you!

I couldn't resist sharing this beautiful fountain with you. George's brother David bought this fountain 3 years ago in anticipation of giving it to us as a wedding gift. After he painstakingly painted it, he filled it with water and plugged it in to see how it looked. David decided he liked the fountain so much, that he left it up for awhile to enjoy before shipping it off to us. During this time his neighbor was dying of cancer; one of his neighbor's small pleasures in life was sitting outdoors enjoying the garden and listening to this fountain.

One day the neighbor told David how much he enjoyed hearing the sound of this fountain, so David promptly brought the fountain over to his neighbor's garden and hung it close by so he could enjoy the sound and the beauty of the fountain. When David gave us this fountain he was apologizing for it being used, we are delighted to know our wedding gift brought so much happiness to someone in their last day. I think of that man every time I look at it.

Here's a shot of our beds on the side of the house. This year I'm doing impatiens and begonias in various shades of pink. Hostas are in the back. This weekend I snagged several pots of wave petunias at half off on the clearance rack at Lowes, so I put those into hanging planters. Hopefully the get growing fast -- I'm about a month behind on getting those started.

This is the area behind our garage. It is covered in pretty heavy shade for most of the day. We are going with all shade plants back here -- impatiens, jack-in-the-pulpit, hosta, and a few others that I don't know the names of. We would like to do ferns too, but the ground doesn't stay wet enough.

Here's Barney wanting to come out and help. The mosquitoes are so bad right now that they will just about eat you alive. George and I wear long sleeves, pants, hats, and sometimes a hooded sweatshirt if we can stand the heat and all the bug spray we can handle. We can't exactly dress Barney and then dip him in bug spray so he stays inside a lot of the time until the mosquitoes aren't so bad.

I just love the hydrangeas in the foreground and the blue something-or-others in the background. Can you tell I'm not real big on plant names?

This weekend, we picked our first mulberries and blackberries. I'm going to use this recipe and make a blackberry-mulberry-rhubarb crisp today.

Here's our work clothes hanging on the line. You can always tell how good of a day you've had by how dirty you get. Well, maybe not always. Now that I'm a grown up, I have lots of good days that don't involve getting dirty. When I was a little kid I measured how good my day was by how dirty my feet got. My sisters and I used to get so dirty that Mom made us site on the side porch and scrub our feet with a brush and soapy water before we could come in to bed. Those were some very good days indeed.

The 6th Picture Game

Have you heard of the 6th Picture Game? I first saw it on lifeasMOM. The gist of the 6th Picture Game is that you go to your online photo files and pick out the 6th picture in the line up, post it on your blog and tell others a little about the photo.

Here's my 6th photo from my Picasa files. Now I'll tell you a little about it.

This picture brings back so many memories for me. It's a photograph of my newly remodeled kitchen taken around June of 2005. This is in my old house where I lived before getting married to George. It was a beautiful little Cape Cod style home in a nice family friendly neighborhood. The home was junk when I bought it, but you could see it had good "bones". Over time, I slowly remodeled and redecorated it so that it was a beautiful, comfortable little home. Oh, how I loved living there.

The kitchen was one of the final areas to be remodeled. This was the first time I ever lived in a home with a nice, new kitchen - all of my own choosing. What a wonderful feeling, boy was it ever hard to let someone else take over "my" kitchen when I sold the place. Sometimes I still want to walk in there and see if the new owners have done anything to wreck "MY" house.

Let's take a little tour...

See the stove on the far left? It was the first gas stove I ever cooked on, boy did it take a while to get used to cooking with gas! See the white cast iron sink -- it's heavier than you would ever want to lift. It had deep bowls and a little extra room for big pans which was terrific. However, it needed to be bleached often once the finish wore off. On the right side of the sink, you will see my beloved Old Towne Blue Corelle Ware dishes. My sister bought me a set of these for my 23rd birthday. They are still my favorites today. So simple and you got to love the blue trim.


Take a look at the shelf above the kitchen sink. I've always had a thing for plants on the kitchen window sill, but most window sills aren't wide enough to hold any kind of sizable plant. George made this extra wide shelf out of oak to match the cabinets. The sunlight streaming in amongst the white lace curtains and green plants was so beautiful each morning. He also made the plant shelves on the sides of the cabinets. That's where I used to start all my new baby plants.

See the bowl of fruit? For some reason, I've always liked to keep a bowl of fruit out on the counter -- it just looks so pretty. The upper half of the room is wallpapered, although I really like this pattern, this was my first and LAST wall papering job. George has strict orders to never, ever allow me wallpaper anything, no matter how much I beg and plead about how pretty it will look after the mess. And, there are people do this for a living?!

Here's a funny thing...

I still have everything in this photo that's not nailed down. The dishes, flower pots, curtains, watering can, canisters, coffee pot and can opener cover. My life is like that. Once I find something I like, I stay with it until the very end and then I go out and get another one just exactly like the one that broke or wore out. It is a sad day in my world when they stop making something I love and had hoped to continue using until the day I die. Oh sure, every once in a great while, I will want to try out something different and new, but not very often. See all the permanent stuff in the photo, like the cabinets, sink, stove? I guarantee you that if I had to pick out all these things new today, they would be exactly the same. Even the paint and wallpaper. How boring huh?

Perhaps the really disturbing part of all this is that I LIKE being this way, and George is the same way. He repeatedly buys the exact same tools, lights, clothes, trucks, hats, gloves, etc. We even painted the interiors of our homes the same colour before marriage. And we were both deliriously happy to paint our new home the very same colour. Other than that, we try very hard to be normal :)

Want to play too? Pick out your 6th picture, post it and tell us a little about it. If you put something up, please leave a link in the comment section to let us know.

Thanks!

Hot New July Printable & E- Coupons

Wow! Is it July already? It's time for some great new coupons for the new month.

Go here to see over 10 pages of new printable coupons for July. This week is going to be a great bargain shopping week in our house. Many of these coupons paired up with the great 4th of July sales will allow me to score many items for almost free.


If you shop at one of these stores you won't want to miss the new Cellfire e-coupons.

Kroger
Kroger Affiliated store
Tom Thumb
Randalls
Carrs
Dominick's
Genuardi's
Pavillions
Safeway
Vons

Here's the new list of Cellfire e-coupons. If you would like to learn more about using e-coupons to help you save even more money at the grocery store, you can go here.


Betty Crocker Fruit Snacks Save $.50
Nature Valley Gran Bars Save $.40
Total Cereal Save $.75
Betty Crocker Frostg Save $.50
Betty Crocker Cookie Mx Save $.40
BC Supreme Brownie Save $.75
Multigrain Cheerios Save $.55
Large Yoplait Save $.55
Nature Valley Bars Save $.50
Yoplait Kids Zone Save $.80
Yoplait Cups Save $.50
Btty Crockr Warm Del Save $.50
Yoplait Fiber One Save $1.00
Fiber One Muffin Mix Save $.50
Chex Mix Bars Save $.60

World's Best Rhubarb Crisp

Okay, so this might not be the world's best Rhubarb Crisp, but I can say with all honesty it is the best Rhubarb Crisp I have ever eaten. When we were up north visiting my in-laws, my mother-in-law served us three very good desserts and this was one of them. Yes, we are now on a diet.

Here's the recipe, please note this makes and 8x8 pan. Double the recipe for a 9x13.

World's Best Rhubarb Crisp

Filling

3 cups diced rhubarb

1 cup sugar

1 Tbsp water

1 tsp cornstarch

Base and Topping Mixture

1 cup flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 cup oatmeal

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup melted butter

Cook filling ingredients on medium until thickened. This mixture should be quite thick. Set aside. Mix all Base and Topping ingredients together. Lightly pack 2/3rds of the base/topping mixture into the bottom of the dish. Spread filling over the bottom mixture and top with the remaining 1/3 of the base/topping mixture. Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. Best served slightly warm with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

Have you printed July's hottest coupons from Coupons.com yet? Click here to get yours. Remember, each coupon can be printed twice.

This post is liked to the In Season Recipe Swap & Tempt my Tummy Tuesday.

Mid Week Humor

Kid Corral

Old LIFE Magazines

One of George's customers lent us a whole stack of old LIFE magazines from the early 70's. I really enjoy paging through old magazines, so I was especially delighted to receive a whole stack of older LIFE magazines. It's so entertaining to look through the old advertisements and read about the topics that were relevant in that day.

Most of the old magazines I've looked through are from the 1950's and 60's, before our country experienced the major culture and values shift of the early 70's. Not having personally lived through the middle of this change I was really curious to see what stories Life carried at this time. Let's just say it was very educational. Some articles were well before their time. I wondered what the authors, if still living would think about our lives today. A handful of articles made me weep with sorrow, others caused me to think about how much our world has changed in the last 35 years.

Here's some interesting finds from this stack of Life magazines:

Crime:

Apparently crime took a major turn for the worse in the late 60's through the early 70's, especially in large urban areas. I'm just accustomed to thinking high crime rates are "normal". Sad. My mom recalls living in the city as a child -- people seldom locked their houses (even at night) or their cars.

I've thought crime was always a big problem in larger cities, simply because there are just so many people. (I also know crime exists even in small, close knit communities.) What I didn't realize was that although crime has always been present, prior to this time period it wasn't the gigantic problem it is today. There were countless articles and letters to the editors of Life about the dramatically rising crime rates. From what I read, the citizens appeared to be outraged by this, and of course very angry at what was happening to their communities. I wonder what they think about our crime rates today.

Feminists

Because I was born into the hey-day of the feminist era, you might think I have had a lot of experience with feminists. Not so. The women in our little rural farming community were so busy; they didn't seem very interested in taking on even more work.

After reading countless LIFE articles that dealt with the early 70's Feminist movement, lets just say I was shocked. Oh my goodness, was I ever shocked, enlightened and educated. Because I never had much personal exposure with feminists, I never fully understood how anti-men, anti-marriage and anti-children this movement was. I naively assumed feminists were just bored homemakers that wanted change. I wept over one article about whole groups of women that abandoned their children and husbands because they felt their family was holding them back. These women admitted to loving their families but they just knew there was more out there for them. Something more important out there for you besides your family. Really.

The women that stayed with their families drew up complicated domestic work contracts to make sure their husbands did just as much housework as they did. Too funny -- how did they work this -- like the Weight Watchers Points system? Do you get 2 points for changing a diaper -- 3 if it's a messy one and 10 points for mowing the lawn? Do both parties have accomplish 100 points worth of work each and everyday? It reminds me of a little kid trying to make absolutely certain that his sibling doesn't get even an ounce more cake than he gets.

Seriously, this topic was one of the most eye-opening for me out of all the topics covered in LIFE. No doubt we will all have to live with the effects of this movement for some time to come, but I'm really glad to see so many women of my generation shy away from developing such a hateful attitude toward men, families, homemakers and children. And, I am especially happy they do this with absolutely no apology.

Smoking

Although the ads in early 1970's stop short of telling you smoking is healthy, like the 1940's, 50's and 60's magazines, they do all they can to imply you will look darn good if you take up smoking. Most ads show a ruggedly handsome older man with a very pretty young woman. Some pictured a housewife smoking up the breakfast table after her family is gone for the day. Mmmm, what a way to start your day.

Cars

I get a real kick out of the car ads. Remember when power steering was considered a luxury? The early 70's was the death of the muscle car era. Sniff, sniff. I'm all for good gas mileage ... blah, blah, blah. But I'll readily admit, that a 1973 Gremlin does nothing for me. Puting a racing stripe on the side does not make a lame car look cool. Now, here is a cool car. The early 70's issues only contained ads for lame, gas saving cars. Not one cool car in the whole lot of them. This is a big contrast to the 1950's and 60's magazines which contained almost all cool cars.



Drugs

Not the kind you are thinking. These are prescription drugs. There were a couple of articles written about the sorry state of this country where so many citizens are taking a basketful of prescription drugs. This was written in the early 70's. Lord have mercy -- what the writers must think of our pill popping ways 35 years later! Not only do have a pill for every conceivable ailment, we even have pills for all the side effects of those pills and so on and so on.

Hippies

Where are the hippies? Like feminists, hippies weren't popular in my neck of the woods. It's difficult to adopt the Hippy lifestyle when you have to get up early to do chores and spend all day working in the fields. Funny how hard work keeps people out of mischief. Anyway, I was really surprised there wasn't more coverage of the Hippy movement in these issues.

Race Issues

It seems like every other magazine today has an article about race and ethnic relations. I can't believe this wasn't a bigger deal in the early 70's. Did people just not talk about it back then? Or maybe they didn't in LIFE magazine?

International Cruises

There were are considerable number of advertisements for cruises to the Orient, and the Mediterranean at a cost of what I'm sure would be more than a year's take home pay for the average guy. I was surprised to see so many ads for budget price cars in the same magazine with ads for expensive cruises. What advertising major, came up with that idea?

Reading through old magazines is a great way to take a peek into our past and see what the popular issues of the day were and how they compare to the issues today. Sometimes I wonder what a reader 20 years from now will think about reading the publications of today.

What are some of your memories from the early 70's or before?