Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Greater Basilisk wrote:
I wish my birthstone were something green, but seeing as it’s garnet, I’ve taken a liking to that particular one.
Garnets come in a wide variety of colors including green. Green garnets are categorized as ‘grossular’ or ‘grossularite’ and the most well known are Tsavorite garnets discovered in Tanzania around 1967-68. They are very lovely and the color is usually a light, spring green but can also be darker toward emerald.
The other grouping of green garnets are known as ‘demantoid’. The brilliance of these garnets can rival diamond and because they are rare, they can be uber, uber expensive; but can you say stunningly, gorgeously breath taking? They are so beautiful, in fact, that the great Russian jeweler, Carl Faberge, used them any chance he could.
I happen to like green stones myself, particularly if they are natural and green garnet is one of my favorites 😀
twindragonsmum
tdm
In the early days of ebay, before it was a world wide entity, someone sold a tumbleweed. I just hoped at the time that it wasn’t one of the radioactive tumbleweeds that grow in the Tri-Cities area of Washington State! 😯 Hubby and I used to joke that our kids would never need night lights there because the kids would glow in the dark 😀
twindragonsmum
tdm
skigod377 wrote:I am always down for a new mac n cheese recipe, though I love the box kind for some reason. My bf makes it from scratch and prefers it, but I just like Kraft! 😆
One of my boys likes Kraft and the other likes the home made, especially if Gram’pa makes it! I like either one. Essentially, the home made version doesn’t take any longer to prepare than the boxed version. Here are our family recipes for mac & cheese. Enjoy!
From the Marshall Family Cook Book (Marshall is my maiden name)
Version I
1 lb. package of macaroni or pasta of choice
2 cups hot milk
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
2 cups grated cheddar cheese
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese (fresh is best)
garlic, onion, Worcestershire sauce to tastePut the pasta on to cook in salted boiling water, per package directions. In a medium skillet, melt the butter, whisk in the flour and cook over medium heat, whisking, two or three minutes (should bubble nicely). Some finely chopped onion and minced garlic can be added at this time. Add the salt and pepper, then whisk in the milk. Bring to a simmer and simmer three to five minutes to thicken, whisking to keep from sticking or burning. Remove from heat, check seasoning, add grated cheeses, and a couple dashes of Worcestershire sauce, to taste. Stir to melt and blend cheese. Pour over the cooked drained pasta, stir to incoporate. Can be served like this or put in a buttered casserole dish, top with bread crumbs, and bake at 350F till browned and heated through.
Our family generally does not bake it. We just gobble it up hot out of the pan.
Version II
2 cups macaroni
2 Tablespoons butter
1 1/2 to 2 Tablespoons flour
1 small onion chopped
1/2 bay leaf
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1 cup milk
1 cup mild grated cheesePut macaroni on to cook in salted boiling water per package direction. In a sauce pan, melt butter over low heat. Whisk in flour and cook three to five minutes until bubbly. Add onion, salt, paprika, mustard and bay leaf. Whisk milk in slowly to keep flour mixture from lumping. Cook and stir sauce until thickened and smooth. Add cheese, remove from heat and stir till cheese is melted. Remove bay leaf from sauce, pour over drained macaroni and stir to incorporate. Serve pipping hot.
Basically the only difference between the two recipes are seasonings and type of cheese. Both start with a roux or white sauce and have cheese added to make a cheese sauce. Hope you like them! 😀 😀 😀
twindragonsmum
tdm
skigod377 wrote:I have to agree with the Mac N Cheese, the grilled cheese, and the soup. I like chicken noodle when I have a cold. I like mac N cheese cuz thats what I grew up on. That and Ramen. I like Spagetti O’s. too.
What sort of Mac n Cheese? The sort out of the blue box or the home made kind? I’ve got a great recipe for the home made sort in our family cookbook. If anyone is interested I’ll be happy to post it 😀
twindragonsmum
tdm
This is my Uncle John’s method for washing a frying pan. Enjoy! 😀
Take a cast iron skillet or other heavy duty pan, not Teflon coated. Heat it over medium high heat. Add a teaspoon of oil and wait until it just starts to smoke. Add a nice cut of steak or other nice piece of meat. Don’t touch it for two minutes. Flip it over after it is nice and brown and let it cook for another two minutes. Remove the meat and put it on a plate. Cover it loosely with foil. Turn down the heat to medium and add one cup or can of beef stock. Stir with a whisk to remove all the stuck on bits and meat juices. Let it cook down until there is only half as much. Add a teaspoon or two of cornstarch mixed with a little water and bring to a boil. Add a pat of butter to this if you want and season with salt and pepper. Pour the mixture over the steak or the rice or potatoes you are serving with it. Turn off the heat and take the pan to the sink. Add some warm water and soap. Brush out the pan with a scrub brush, rinse and return to the still warm burner. When the pan is dry, put it away and eat the steak and potatoes. 😀
When my siblings and I started leaving home for college, our family put together a family cook book for us to take with us. It starts with basics like “How to boil water”. Seriously. Need to know how to boil an egg? Got that too. All the way up to “How to host a dinner party.” It also includes all the family lore that goes along with every recipe and has all the family favorites including Great Gra’ma’s “two crust lemon pie” which is comfort food indeed. It’s been updated over the years by the extended family and friends of the family. 24 years later the latest edition, all 460 pages of it, arrived just in time for the marriage of the first great grandchild and that new generation! My twins like to read it just for the family history and stories and we have lots of fun choosing what to make for dinner, or dessert, or breakfast, or brunch…
twindragonsmum
tdm
Blackdesertwind wrote:Twindragonsmum, maybe you could post a picture of him all cleaned up. 😀
I would really love to post pics for you but I’m really illiterate when it comes to the computer and I’ve no idea how to post a picture 😳 😳 😳 Help?!? Please?!? (and they need to be simple instructions ’cause did I mention I’ve never done that before? 😯 )
thanks! twindragonsmum
p.s. my first naked pyo’s just arrived (drool!) now to work up enough courage to actually touch them ! 😆
tdm
Oh, he’s lovely! I’ll never be able to own one though, so I’ll just droooooool over the pics! 😀 Hope you feel better after some rest. Pain can literally be a killer (been there, still doing that, have the t-shirt, don’t ever want to do that again!) Keep us posted on your progress 8)
twindragonsmum
tdm
I finally got him clean
! I used an old, soft bristle tooth brush, a little baby shampoo (nothing with any sort of conditioner in it) and a little warm water.Put a teeny bit of shampoo on the wet tooth brush and gently, gently got into the crevices of the dragon. Wiped it off with a damp, micro fiber cloth. Once I’d gotten all the crevices I wiped him off several more times with the cloth concentrating on the crevices to remove any remaining shampoo. Then I buffed him up with a dry micro fiber cloth and now he’s beautiful! Just need a little touch up paint that Melody is kindly sending and he’ll be back to his lovely, regal self.
Hope this helps anyone with a similar problem. Just remember to use the smallest amount of baby shampoo possible.
twindragonsmum 😀
p.s. He (the dragon) tends to follow me around the house like one of the cats. Okay, so I take him with me to which ever room I’m going to be in for awhile. He does have a very interested look of curiosity on his face, like he wants to be involved in whats going on in the household. He also is very good at guarding the family when dad is away on business! He is in desperate need of a name 😕 Any suggestions? and yes, I freely admit that I’m a geek 😀
tdm
Arlla wrote:Tintaglia wrote:The male dragon comes to mind for me. He’s always been my favorite sculpt. I’d love to see him in another pose facing the opposite direction, but not necessarily a mirror image.
I totally agree – a true mirror image wouldn’t be nearly as neat as the same sculpt facing the opposite direction with a slightly different pose than the first. That keeps them seeming like real alive things, instead of statues!
Yes, that’s what I was thinking. Just couldn’t find the right wording 🙄 . Had a brain glitch!
twindragonsmum
tdm
Hi Melody,
I was wondering if you’d ever considered doing mirror image poses of at least the male dragon? I have one sitting on one side of my piano and it would be fun to have another facing the other direction in the same sort of ‘interested listening’ pose; partly because I appreciate symmetry and partly because I would have an audience that would be sympathetic to my attempts at playing said piano 🙄 ! Thanks,twindragonsmum 😀
tdm
For a name, how about Houdini? Kitty sounds like he has a great disappearing act going on. 😯 Glad to hear the dogs are so calm about the whole situation.
twindragonsmum
tdm
Dad worked for IBM and computers were programmed with punch cards. We would go to the yearly open house at IBM and got to see the ‘super computers’. They took up whole huge rooms and ran reel to reel tapes that were about the size of a dinner plate. Ever wondered where the term ‘bug’ came from to indicate a glitch in a program? It came about because if a fly or insect (bug) of any sort got into or onto one of the magnetic tapes and ran through the reader portion of the computer, it couldn’t read through the bug and caused everything to crash. What most people don’t know is that the PC that we all have at home and use every day has more computing power in that little box than all the computers combined that NASA used to put men on the moon 😯 and most cell phones today have more computing power than the original PC’s that came out in the early eighties!
twindragonsmum
tdm
Any chance he’s part feral? We had two kitties before Loki and Pixel and before our boys were born named Fred and Abby – we got them in farm territory out in south eastern Washington State and they told us they (Fred and Abby) were part feral. My husband and I were the only people those two would approach so they went home with us. It took awhile to gentle them. They didn’t like to be handled but Rod, my husband, would carry them around in his bathrobe pockets and we would wrap them up papoose style in a bath towel to hold them while we watched tv. It seemed to help them feel a little more secure. When we weren’t at home or at night, we confined them to the bathroom and once they were comfortable with that part of the house we allowed them supervised exploration of the rest of the house.
If he has just been separated from his litter mates for the first time he will probably have some anxiety over that and if there are other bigger animals in the house that can be really intimidating too. If you have a vet close by see if they carry feline facial hormones in spray form. Our vet does and it is a big help in calming our kitties when something new happens or things change. Just be really patient and as calm as possible and see how things go. Give it a good week and he should start to settle in. Did you say you had a dog as well? That can be hard for a shy kitty. Sometimes it helps if you put a blanket or towel that your dog sleeps with in the kitty kennel or bathroom or closet (where ever kitty is most comfy) along with the kitten. This allows baby cat to become comfortable with your canine child’s scent in a non-threating manner. Do the same for the pup so that he can become acquainted with the kitten’s scent without having to sniff kitty all over right away. It always helps to be holding and petting the pup when you allow them to meet. It keeps the pup calm and lets kitty approach at his own pace and comfort level.
Hope this helps 🙂
twindragonsmum
p.s. Fred was short for Freddy Krueger and Abby was Abby because she had ‘Abby-solutely no tail’. Growing up we had a cat called ‘Cheaper than mouse traps’ because we got her for free and caught all the mice in the area. My brother who lives in Australia named their cat ‘Chook’ which is Aussie slang for ‘Chicken’ because she was a big scardy cat. It’s hysterical to hear my nieces calling “Here chook, chook, chook, chook” when it’s time to feed the chickens and see all the hens and the cat come running! 😀
tdm
