Choice Morsels

     Welcome back! Happy Monday to you! Had a really good cardio/weight training work-out at the Y this morning, then came home and had a black bean quesadilla for lunch while watching the most recent episode of "Once Upon A Time," at abc.com. After that, I moved a couple baby tomato plants that came up close together to separate locations, then resprayed the vinyl-siding with bleach/detergent, since I didn't have enough bleach for the whole job last week. I like a green patina on my clay pots; not so much on my house.   Today's Good Eating recipe is for my favorite lunch: "Black Bean Quesadilla."   Really, when I make these, I just add things like onions and shake on seasons as suits me, but for you I'll give some approximate measurements, though you can add or less of whatever you like to your own tastes.   One can of black beans works out to 1/2 cup of beans each on four 7-inch tortillas making a total of 4 quesadillas. Perfect for

The Mama Kat Prompt Challenge for today is "Describe a time when you wish you had spoken up."     Have you ever been on a cave tour? I have. More then once. When was a kid, we visited Mammoth Cave, which is HUGE and really cool. But here in Florida, we also have a state park with caves you can take a guided tour through. It's called Florida Caverns State Park, located on the panhandle about halfway to Tallahassee. Of course, compared to Mammoth, these are miniature caves, but they make great field trip fare for the school kids and offer a cool retreat from summer heat. The thing about cave tours is they all want to show you how really dark it is by turning off the lights so you can appreciate why cave crickets and fish are blind So, inevitably, the ranger will guide your group into a suitably large space, then after a talk about it, turn off the lights, so you can experience utter darkness. Total darkness actually is a little visually disconcerting as your e

Today's outside task was spraying down the exterior vinyl siding with bleach/soap. Years ago I saved a Green Sweep bottle, which is a type of liquid weed & feed, because the empty bottle has a long, strong spray that's fantastic for this job. It's not quite power-spraying. I rely on the bleach and strong Florida sun to do most of the work.   Yesterday, I worked on mowing and edging beds. I edged the bed along the retaining wall, then moved to the back rear bed where I pulled up the black vinyl edging. A friend helped us put that in and did so, arranging it into a tight "S" curve, which sounds like a good idea until you try to mow . The curves are just too short for the mower to fit and finally, after years of putting up with it, I've decided to pulling up all that black edging. It's much easier to just keep the beds well mulched and edged periodically with a spade. There's Canna's in that bed that are supposed to be along the neighbors

Welcome back!  I've been amazed by how many fast-food sandwiches heavily feature bacon, which makes for a huge addition of calories on a sandwich already calorie rich with special sauce & cheese. Plus what's with adding this pile of french-fried onion straws that are little more then fried grease?  Just a more fat and calories. A good suggestion I read was, if you want some bacon flavor on your burger or baked potato at home, buy a bottle of Real Bacon Bits and add 1 level tablespoon, which is only 25 calories.    Today's Good Eating topic is my favorite breakfast sandwich that I make at home. Usually for lunch on Friday or Saturdays. Items required: Thomas English Corn Muffins (1 muffin per person being served) Soy Breakfast Links, any brand ( 2 links per sandwich) Eggs (1 per sandwich) Salt, pepper, herbs as desired.   Preparation: *Warm up your English muffins as you like. Mine are usually frozen, so I microwave them 1 min, then split. *Put bre

The Mama Kat topic for today is "Something that gave you a headache." In my case, I'm going with a figurative headache.   The first thing that comes to mind as as a headache-giver is all the customers back when I used to work at a flower shop. I was a floral designer, which means I made the arrangements. I also answered the phone and dealt with customers directly over the counter---then the headaches would start. I don't believe that old adage about "the customer always been right."  In fact, I frequently found flower buyers to have really over the top expectations far exceeding reality. At this particular shop, we designers were all part-time and all worked different days. Only the manager worked Monday through Friday and never on Saturdays if she could help it. The rest of rotated Saturdays. Invariably, Saturday was the favorite customer day for calling about an a billing issues or a complaints, neither of which I, simple designer, could n

What is garden art, you wonder? It the art of re-purposing pretty or interesting items, whether  something found a yard sale or something right in your basement, into useful or decorative purpose in your landscape. You can search terms like "garden junk" or "garden art" and find lots of photos of clever ideas people have. My husband and I both always have our eyes peeled for that "just right" find!   Today's photos are of my own newest garden art editions! First: A pair of metal flowers my husband found at the Airmen's Attic on base (which is like a thrift shop).They are designed to hang, so I didn't know where to put them. That was last summer. This year I finally decided upon the perfect spot: the trellis's in front of the house!  This is only the second year I've had the trellis's in this location for my shrub rose (that would rather climb then be a shrub--go figure). You can see the rose branches along the bottom of t