When I was a kid, we often had to cut corners to make ends meet and put food on the table. Thus the addition of SPAM on my mother’s grocery list. My mother was particularly adept at using this meat-in-a-can product. She’d Virginia bake it with pineapple and cloves, fry it with [...]

When we moved from upstate NY to Florida, we had to learn not only about plants we’d never seen before, but also how to grow the ones we were familiar with. To do so, we took a couple of horticultural courses included in the Adult Education curriculum at the local high school and given [...]

It’s that time of year again when I find myself chasing “dog bunnies” (that’s the canine version of dust bunnies) around my house. Or at least I did. I have two very large, very furry dogs – a Collie and a Golden Retriever. Both have scads of fur and both leave it [...]

She stands 5’10”, weighs 165 pounds, and is 25 years old.  Her hobbies are cycling, tennis, reading and watching Law and Order.  Her heroine is Olympic gold medal skier Picabo Street, and one of her best friends is her fiercest rival, German skier Julia Mancuso. She’s sustained serious wrist, back, tongue and shin injuries that [...]

Last night, after dinner with a friend, I had to go to Walmart to pick up some things before coming home.  It was after eight o’clock, and our Walmart’s parking lot is not particularly well lit at night.  As always when going there at night, I parked as close to the front door as possible. 
On [...]

Reaching senior citizen status isn’t all that bad . . . for the most part. Oh, sure, your mind is still operating on twenty-year-old time, and your body can’t keep up. Staying awake to catch the eleven o’clock news is a challenge. Going into a clothing store and trying to find clothes that don’t make [...]

When it’s cold outside, what’s better than a warm, sweet desert to thaw the cockles of your heart? And what’s better to do that than CHEESECAKE? Here’s a recipe for one that a friend gave me (with a little fine-tuning from me). Enjoy and stay warm! Spring will be here soon.
HOT [...]

Sometimes our lives become so complicated and so full of all the things we “have” to get done or obtain, the things that top of our so-called priority list, that we miss the things that really matter.  It’s not hard in this day and age to get caught up in the hectic pace of life.  [...]

Autumn is here! Where I come from, the Hudson River Valley of Upstate New York, September means the arrival of apple-picking season. Not just any apple, but the famous NY State Macintosh, named for John Macintosh, who discovered this tasty fruit in 1811. (Yes, that’s the brand name of a computer, but first it was [...]

Having reached the downhill part of this broken wrist marathon and since the pain is all but gone, I’ve had time to reflect on the past six weeks of hell.  One of the things I’ve thought about is that one should never refrain from asking questions of the “in-the-know” (supposedly) people around one. For instance, [...]