Dragon

Today is beautiful and sunny, a glorious day to be laying out in the yard with a good book and perhaps a lovely margarita or daquri. To bad I'm stuck at work

indigo

Sounds good Dragon but I don't think you'd be out in my
neck of the woods right now....it's 33celsius (91 F) with a
humidity index of 43 or 109! The air is so hot, it's amazing!
I just hope we don't have any blackouts....we might get some
relief by the weekend....on that note I think I'll open a nice
cold Guinness!

Dragon

I heard about the heat wave you guys are going through. You're right, I'm happy with our mid-20's weather. I'll have a cold lime drink tonight and think cool thoughts for you. Enjoy that Guinness!

Baldur

Here is the local weather. Yesterday at Boughbreak, the mercury climbed to 101 degrees Farenheit. It was downright nasty with high humidity too.
Today will be a much cooler 90 degrees.
Baldur hates the Summer, and thinks that living somewhere much further North would be preferable.

Hazer

Hazer has a lovely chunk of watermelon chilling in the fridge. Tonight I will make some rollkuchen to go with it and that will be our supper. A special treat reserved for the hottest of days. Although I know the dryer heat we have here is nothing compared to what you easterners are suffering through.

Baldur

Robert and I have a wake to attend this evening.
We will be right near a restaurant that we'd been given a gift card for, so after paying respects we will have dinner out.

indigo

Yes...it's HOT. I'm not moving out of my house. For the first time in my
life we have AC and I love it! I go through a Jekyll and Hyde thing with
humidity..... ;]

Dragon

Dragon is making Manhatten style corn chowder for dinner tonight (with a recipe compliments of our most excellent host Baldur). I know it's a hot soup and a chowder and all but it seemed summery to me and I already had most of the ingredients so I decided to go for it. So far it smells heavenly but the potatoes are not tender enough for eating yet. Just a little more time...

Dragon

I posted a little story about a cat who lost both his back feet in a combine accident a little while ago. Here's a video about how they gave him new feet. It's amazing how resiliant animals are.
http://icanhascheezburger.com/2010/07/08/funny-pictures-the-worlds-first-bionic-kitteh/

marius

Been really busy lately but trying to catch up a bit now: charmed with the great stories and fun here! Wish I'd been with Dragon so I could have eaten that salmon. (Well, not the piece she spit out. LOL). But marius LOVES fish! Pretty much all things fishy excluding scallops and oysters.

Also enjoyed all the cat stories - as always.

It has been a busy summer here. Got a sort-of computer project that has required a lot of computer time and when not working on that, kind of don't' want to be anywhere near the computer. It's all fun but just a different pace/focus. And, grand kid time has been most entertaining too and that leads to a little Missouri Moment. ; )

We recently had the just barely-thirteen year old grand daughter overnight. She is thirteen going on twenty-five! We got to hear about boyfriends, girl friends, all the dramas and such. She said her hobbies are "shopping and friends." I said those sound like good hobbies. We watched a movie and after it was over she delighted us with a display of the hormones that make teens alternate between adult/child personas with wild abandon: we'd just turned off the movie when she said with the great enthusiasm of a five year old, "We could play Hide and Seek!"

It was all grandpa and I could do to not burst out laughing. Grandpa said he was too old to play that and I'm not sure what excuse I made. But then ... an idea came to me: show her how to play Hide and Seek with the Maine Coon cat! He's *very* good at that game and although he mostly likes to do the seeking, he has been known to do the hiding too.

Well, grand daughter liked the game but said it would have been more fun if WE had played too. Later when she went to sleep, she wanted to sleep with one of grandpa's stuffed animals. That's a great honor and apparently she's not too old for that but on my way out of her room I heard, "Um grandma, I sleep with the door *closed* now!" Okay then. It's amazing how fast they change in just a few months.

After the grand daughter left the next day spouse said, "I'm not sure who the five year old is. I mean, YOU are the one who plays Hide and Seek with the cat all the time!"

Um ... yes ... that is true. We're still laughing about it. : )

Dragon

We have a game with our cat Oscar. He starts it by howling loudly at the top of his lungs until one or both of us finally get so sick of it we jump up and grab a spray bottle and chase him around the condo squirting him until he's soaked. Works best when both of us are chasing him because we can ambush him or trap him between us in the hallway and really give it to him. He's usually quiet for a while after that because he's so busy grooming the water off of himself.

Dragon

Well, it's Dragon's fella's birthday today so I thought I'd try making him some crab cakes. I've got a recipe from the favorite recipes thread courtesy of Baldur and I just came across it again last night and thought ooo would I ever like to try these. I haven't made them before so I'm hoping they turn out alright. They look fairly simple so I probably won't mess them up. We also have a wonderful loaf of bread with whole garlic cloves in them to be warmed up in the oven and eaten with baba ganouj. Mmmmm, drool...
My sweetie has requested that I make him a cake so I will attempt that too. I've never had much luck with baking (unless you count cupcakes which I rock at but lets face it a monkey could make them if it could read the directions :p ) and the recipe is one of his moms which she makes incredibly well so hopefully I won't dissapoint. My one problem is that it calls for a 12 cup bundt pan and we only have a 10 cup one. I suggested using a regular cake pan but he instantly shook his head, it just wouldn't be the same that way. So I'm going to use the 10 cup pan and make cupcakes out of whats left, which can't be too much and at least if the cake doesn't turn out the cupcakes likely will.
So wish me luck for the birthday cooking extravaganza!

Hazer

I'm sure your meal will be a hit all the way from the crab cakes to the Birthday cake!

I'm planning a Birthday celebration too. My mother-in-law will be here on Friday, which will be her 81st birthday. I thought I would stick to a light meal as she will have been sitting in the car most of the day. It will probably be an assortment of salads, cold cuts and fresh buns. She is diabetic, so I'm not sure what to do for her cake. If it's been a hot day I may just resort to an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen.

Then on Saturday we are bringing her to your fair city for the Southern Gospel Quartet Convention...always a good time...and we usually run into some folks we know.

Dragon

Wow 81! And a diabetic to boot. My grandpa was a diabetic and he made it all the way into his 90s. I seem to recall he ate a lot of sugar free jell-o for desserts. There must be a way to use that. Actually I've made a dessert that was jell-o in a big glass casserole dish with whipped cream and strawberries on top, it kinda looked like cake.

Dragon

The time I made it was for Canada day many years ago so I arranged the strawberries in the shape of a Canadian flag. It went over quite well.

Hazer

That reminds me of a dessert she likes...a layer of graham wafers, a layer of strawberry jello with strawberries and a layer of marshmallow and whipped cream mixture. Not exactly diabetic fare but very cool and refreshing!

Dragon

The crab cakes went over very well and were super easy to make. Knowing that the recipe called for chives and knowing that her sweetie was visiting his mom before coming home (and that she has chives in her garden) Dragon asked him to bring a handful of chives home with him. His mom sent the whole plant! I've decided to try it outside beside our kitchen window and hope (fingers crossed) that the neighbours won't use it as a door stop or an ashtray. DO YOU HEAR THAT NEIGHBOURS? IT IS NOT AN ASHTRAY!!!

Hazer

I went to the local drugstore this morning and met a delightful group of tourists from the Lake District in England. They were heading to the Stampede and were picking up some last minute items and a few were sending postcards home. I hope they have a good time. I carried on to get my groceries for tomorrows Birthday Party and came home glad it wasn't me spending the day at the stampede grounds...my tootsies were hurting already.
I wonder if any of you have had this experience...or a similar one.
According to my pharmacist the medication my Dr. has me on for lowering cholesterol can break down muscle and damage my kidneys. She suggested that I call my Dr. as soon as I got home and have him put me on something else.
It was an ah-ha moment...similar to the one I had about a month ago when I discovered the vitamin cocktail I've been taking faithfully was causing me to have heart palpitations and bad cases of what I can only describe as brain fog crashes. Those symptoms had been baffling my GP and cardio specialist for years...sending me for all kinds of tests, with nothing conclusive to go by.

I finally made the discovery myself when I forgot to take my vitamins one day and felt great. So I thought I'd try it the next day, and the next...I was feeling better and better. I told my Dr. what I had discovered and he agreed it was the niacin...go figure. You try to look after yourself, and that's what you get.

polenta

I've heard that no medicine is absolutely harmless. They all have side effects, even if research has not discovered them yet.
I do take pills every day anyway. LOL

sheftali52

Hazer, one of my husband's previous doctors had him on a cholesterol drug that made his muscles very weak. The doctor insisted my husband needed to give the drug more time to work. Nonsense! New doctor prescribed a different cholesterol drug, which works fine with no serious side effects. I think we have to listen to our bodies to some extent, and know that doctors are good but not perfect.