I’m in Nancy, (north of Paris), jetlagged and therefore awake way too early, passing the time goofing off on my mom’s laptop. We are staying at my uncle’s house…he has pet roly-polies in the compost. He claims they don’t like oranges.

Roly-Poly= “a colloquial name for isopod crustaceans of the family Armadillidiidae”.

Similar to armadillos and roly-polies, I have the ability to make myself tiny and invisible, a skill that comes in handy for discrete people-watching.

Sneaky elevator photos in the airport…roly-poly mode.

I couldn’t resist buying Dazed & Confused for the plane ride…Lily Cole on the cover and an article on “the future of fashion and film” made this issue irresistible. I also wanted to get Nylon, but there wasn’t a single place that sold them in the SFO international terminal.

Enjoyed a cappucino and a fraise tagada. People don’t celebrate Thanksgiving here, since its an American holiday, but we are going to have a make-up Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday, a la francaise.

Happy Black Friday

-Drooling Isn’t Pretty

Dispara con el cañon hasta matar a todos los muñequitos amarillos

The weather man just told me it is going to be 20 degrees below average this weekend.  Thank God it is not the weekend of the 1/2 marathon.  45 is cold to run 13miles!

Day two of break up breakfast so far is a success.  I nuked an apple with cinnamon, 2 tbs wheat berries and unsweetened coconut flakes.

This was my first breakfast with coconut and I really enjoyed it.  I didn’t miss the sweet version either!

Yummy chewy wheat berries!

I have a mini WW bagel with almond butter for my 2nd breakfast…or as Katherine likes to call it my “snack”

Sicily update!!!  She seems to be solidifying!!!!  Fingers crossed that it continues!!!!

We have kickball tonight and are supposed to do Roly Poly for dinner, but it is supposed to rain until Monday so I am guessing that will be canceled Boo I was really looking forward to melted brie cheese!

It seems to be spa week around these parts…I might need something for my feeties!

Have a great Thursday everyone!

See the pictures here:

All I can say is WOW……………. Great artwork

No, it's not a hotdog.

Surprise! I bet after the last post you thought I’d never be back.

Been playing with Shrinky Dinks! This is one of my first attempts. What is it? It’s Tom Kitten from Beatrix Potter’s “The Roly-Poly Pudding.” If you have not read this book, your life is very incomplete and you should read it. Especially if you like cats … all helpless and rolled up in dough and cute!

You can print from your inkjet printer directly onto Shrinky Dinks these days. This means you can print out your photos!

Also not a hotdog.

I’ve got ideas brewing for my Etsy shop. Want to do something like the Shrinky above, but I’m not telling exactly what ’cause I don’t want to spoil the surprise…

crime scene

Some time ago, Evan asked for $1.00 to purchase a roly poly playground.  I wasn’t too thrilled about the purchase.  I know. Only $1.00.  But I am not fond of bugs.  I am not fond of roly polys.  It could have been a penny, but nevertheless a waste of money.  So after pondering the decision for a while, I reluctantly agreed to the purchase.  Evan was out to prove me wrong.  Roly Polys would absolutely love their new playground he told me.  Many a roly poly would be jealous of the few who received this priviledge.

After we came home he immediately went out to search for roly polys.  And having found one, he brought the poor creature in and put it in the playground.  He was a little disappointed that it didn’t right away go and slide down the slide or climb up the jungle gym.  He picked it up and as it coiled up in fear, it did manage to roll down the slide.  Some time later, after some vigorous shaking, (shaken roly poly syndrome?) we found it was no longer moving and quite dead.

The roly poly playground was forgotten for some time.  Then after this long respite from roly poly searching, he found another one in the yard.  We put it in the playground.  We did not shake it.  This one lasted stayed alive for quite a few days! And then a second, very fat roly poly was found.  We put it in the playground as well.  I did not have much hope for these things.  I was thinking that they may last another day or two.

Two days later.  I peered into the playground.  Apparently they were alive and well.  And happy.  A little too happy.  There were about ten or twenty baby rolys crawling around.  I think they liked the playground.

the evidence

A few days later all that remained were the skeletal remains of the whole family.  We had forgotten that they might need water.

On the 6^th day God created the Woodlouse, also known as a roly-poly. This wonder of creation loves to play in damp dark places. I remember growing up that they loved to hang out by the backdoor and when they somehow made it through the cracks they quickly rolled up into a ball and became a crunchy little dead poly.

Tonight Joshua and Jonah, who suffer from Entomophobia, miraculous were cured from this aliment. They stayed up 30 minutes past bedtime catching and counting the roly-poly bugs that were minding their own business in the mulch in the front yard. But this nocturnal detritivores met their match today when Jonah realized that they tickled when he picked them up and let them crawl on his hand. Joshua thought it was more fun to see how far they could crawl up his arm before they fell off.

I suggested instead of seeing how many they could hold in their hand to build a special house for them. Jonah was able to hold 30 at one time but some of them paid a high price to spend time with Jonah and will remain all rolled up. We had a Dairy Queen Sundae cup that is now serving as an eco-system for a hundred or so bugs with some dirt, mulch and a few leaves.

Who needs toys when God has already blessed us with so much in his creation, we just need to take a step back and look and maybe not try and crush all the roly-poly bugs.

Scorpions are considered arachnids and are distantly related to spiders. In Geological time they are more ancient than any insect and may be matched only to those roly poly pillbugs. The earliest known fossils appear to have come from the oceans or water and then became land animals. Fossil scorpions found in Paleozoic strata 430 million years old appear very similar to present day species. Scorpions are nocturnal feeders, during the day they prefer to hide in or beneath someting, trying to conserve water loss.  Bark Scorpions are a slender straw-yellow species, possesses a most painful and long-lasting venom. Bark scorpions may be the only scorpion that can climb verticle surfaces, often looks dead and the more food (insects) around your home quite possibly the more scorpions.

Public Health Concern: Scorpions have neurotoxin venom (toxins which affect the victim’s nervous system). As with any sting or bite if you are allergic or concerned seek medical attention ASAP or call 911 or Poison Control 1-800-222-1222.

It begins with sickness and it ends with sickness…

My last blog ended in Goa as I was about to get our second night bus in India to Bangalore. Since then Lucy and I have been on more than eight, twelve hour night buses! We have fit in a lot of traveling. The night bus to Bangalore didn’t go as smoothly as I had hoped. Lucy and I both got food poisoning and were very ill the whole way – we were not prepared in the slightest! The ride was extremely bumpy and we had ‘reclining’ seats that didn’t recline because we were sat up against the back of the bus. It was not a pleasant journey.

Once we arrived in Bangalore we went straight to a hotel. Although going ’straight to a hotel’ in India is easier said than done. It was more like after haggling a price for two minutes and trying to explain to our driver where we wanted to go and that we didn’t want to go to a different ‘better’ hotel we wanted to go to this one in the ‘must be followed always’ guidebook and after wedging our backpacks into the tiny rickshaw (which were very much like the Tuk Tuks in Thailand – little 3 wheeled cars that you drive with a steering wheel type thing in between your legs) and squeezing in ourselves we were dropped at our hotel. It was actually a 5 minute walk away and we had no idea where we were going. We did eventually make it though and all that is very normal practice when traveling in India. Nothing is ever very easy and it feels a lot harder when you are ill.

The hotel people were very nice when we arrived, and the room was clean with a TV and everything! We even had towels and hot water – complete luxury! We had to fill out loads of paper-work before we could have the room though; it seems everything in India has some sort of bureaucracy involved. After a day in bed sleeping, watching TV and drinking sprite we felt well enough to go to the bus station and book tickets for a bus to Chennai the next day. We were very wary of buses at this point but when we caught the bus the next day it was very nice and they gave us sick bags (like they knew!) except we weren’t sick again fortunately. We arrived in Chennai very late in the evening. He then demanded a lot of money from us because he had taken us to the wrong place and had to drive us somewhere else, he got quite scary; so we gave him the money – it just wasn’t worth it!

I found Chennai a hard city to navigate because it is so spread out and huge. Rickshaw drivers seemed a lot meaner too. We only spent one night before we got another bus (I told you we did a lot of traveling) to Pondicherry. We thought we would have to get a train so went to book a ticket and the guy at the office (despite having a huge cue) invited us into his office and went through everything with us telling us it was better to get a bus. The entire office was staring at us and laughing and so were the cue of Indians outside the glass. You definitely get special attention as a westerner! A lot of the time it is unwanted attention though. We are constantly stared at everywhere we go no matter what you wear. Western men don’t seem to experience it as badly as we have. I bought Indian clothes thinking it might help but I think I get stared at more when I wear them and people walk past you making comments like ‘ooh, like Indian.’ We have been told several times that Lucy ‘looks like English’ but my face is Indian. Hmm…

I am glad we got out of the city because Pondicherry was beautiful. It’s a little town that used to be an old French colonial base and it felt more like the south of France than India. We didn’t really do much though which I was very happy about, we generally just relaxed in the roof top cafés and gardens that they had everywhere.

We had the most embarrassing experience when we arrived. We agreed a rickshaw price once we got off the bus to take us to our hotel. He told us to wait while he brought the rickshaw to us. He was quite an old man! To our horror when he came back he was pushing a cycle rickshaw! We had failed to notice that he had left out the ‘auto’ when he said rickshaw. We have never made that mistake again! We tried to protest (it was tiny and it would have been heavy with just us let alone with our backpacks as well) but he squeezed us on anyway. The next half an hour was the most embarrassing on my life. He was panting and sweating and had to get off several times to push because he couldn’t cycle any longer. We got off way before our hotel because we couldn’t deal with putting him through it anymore, or the humilation (everyone was staring at us horrified at what we were putting the old man through!) He overcharged us loads though so at least he got something out of it.

We stayed for two nights in an Ashram hostel. It was a strange place; I think Ashram might be a religion but it is centered about meditation and yoga. The hostel had a nice garden for this purpose but I only ever saw little kids running around and people sunbathing. It was very tranquil though as there was a sign saying to leave your voice, ego and shoes outside!

I met a very cute little french girl who was probably about 5 years old running around the garden. She decided that I was her best friend although I couldn’t understand anything she was saying (it’s amazing how much you can communicate through body language) She told her parents to go away, so they walked around the garden while she skipped around me collecting leaves and flowers to give me and putting on dance shows. She was so free! It was so lovely to see. She was such a hippie child, she had her hair cut very short and in the middle of her dancing and jumping around she would go into a yoga position. It was so funny! I ended up doing rolly pollys with her to her delight and probably Lucy’s horror. When it was time for me and Lucy to leave she burst into tears! I felt so awful. Her mum explained that she wanted to play with me again but they were leaving the next day. She was only consoled by me and her mum giving her lots of hugs. She was happy by the time she left of course!

Lucy and I had some lovely western dinners for the first time in India – steak and chips one night and pizza the next! The promenade was lovely and we found the best rooftop garden cafe with ice tea and fresh bread with humus and potato salad! Yum. By this point both me and Lucy needed a break from Indian food. We also found a great book fair where we stocked up on our book collection. We got the bus back to Chennai (because we had booked a flight from Chennai to Delhi to save a 3 day train journey) The bus that ran between Pondicherry and Chennai was a public service so it was very cheap but extremely squished and hot. All the seats in India are plastic so you end up with massive sweat patches on your bottom!

To give myself something to do on long bus journeys I have been thinking about and planning mine and Rhodri’s wedding in September. I am getting so excited! So amazing to think that there is only 6 months to go. I looked on Gary’s blog just now and the countdown was on 169 days! (131 by now! – Ed) Woah I am starting to realise that it will probably be quite stressful when I get back. Thankfully I have Katy, Rhodri and Eleri on the job back at home though. I feel so bad leaving it all to them! So so thankful though, not sure it would be possible to organise otherwise.

We had a day to sight see in Chennai before we flew out so we went to the fort but it wasn’t very impressive really. There was an interesting museum with some artifacts from colonial rule though. I didn’t really like Chennai that much though. We met a great Rickshaw driver on the way back from the museum though. He spoke good English, knew where he was going and let us decide the price! We got him to take us to the airport and he charged us so much less than the guide book said it should cost that we had to give him extra just for being the only person that was nice to us and didn’t try to force money out of us. Being hassled and asked for money by beggars gets very overwhelming, tedious and depressing at times. It was a nice break to have a good driver.

Our flight went smoothly – it landed in Hyderabad first picked up more people and went on to Delhi. It was funny – felt like taxi or bus service rather than a flight. I remember having the same experience in Tanzania with the planes – but they were tiny! We arrived in Delhi at 12 pm. We knew there was a train going to Jaipur leaving at 4:30 am so we felt it was pointless to get a hotel for that time – we were also scared about being in a city so late at night so we slept or more didn’t sleep in the airport. We managed to get the 4:30 am train and it was our first experience of a train in India! We only managed to get sleeper seats (you don’t get a reserved bed so you can end up sitting with lots of other people on one bed) but it wasn’t too bad because we hoisted our backpacks onto the top bunks and no one bothered us there! It was a bit of a cramped journey though but it was short in comparison to what we had been doing – only 8 hours! It was quite scary because we didn’t know when to get off as Jaipur was not the last stop – thankfully we asked someone just in time and we had to hurl our bags of the train before it started moving. Scary stuff.

As usual, as soon as we were off the train in Jaipur we were attacked by the rickshaw drivers and food sellers. One particular guy took us out to his (what we thought was a rickshaw) but actually turned out to be a taxi. Phew! He was also very nice and unusually not creepy. He didn’t stare and offered to take us to a nice hotel to just have a look which he did. The hotel was beautiful! It looked like a big house and the rooms were lovely and clean and got cleaned everyday! There was also a beautiful garden with a restaurant and puppet show. He also offered to take us around Jaipur for the next couple of days as our tour guide and driver. Which we also did starting that day! Over the next couple of days we got henna done on our hands and went to the city palace and fort and got taken to some factories where they made beautiful fabric and more money goes to the workers. We bought too much but it was lots of fun. Jaipur was also our first experience of the north and it was a shock how different it was! It is definitely cooler in the north which was a welcome change! Jaipur was a desert region and it reminded me of what I would expect Morocco to look like and there was elephants and camels everywhere! So cool!

After Jaipur we got a night bus to Udaipur to see Chloe! It was so lovely to see her after 7 months! I can’t believe how long it had been. It has made me miss her more though and miss home more! It was lovely to see her parents too – and just to have parents around; people that are older and look after you. We did loads of sightseeing because they are more organised and motivated than me and Lucy usually are. The city palace was amazing!

After two nights there we got a night bus to Agra. Unfortunately we were completely ripped off and told the bus was AC when it wasn’t! We had paid more than double what all the other Indians on the bus had paid. It was an awful nights sleep! I think I had started to feel ill before we got on the bus but by very early on in the journey I was feverish. I woke up at on point in the night thinking it was raining but it was someone throwing up out of their window. I won’t go into more details but after that it was an extremely hot journey because we couldn’t have the window open. Lucy was freezing apparently so I guess it was just me being ill. We had planned to spend no time in Agra (the only reason we were going was to see the Taj Mahal.) We wanted to arrive in the morning, see the Taj and then get a night bus to Khujaraho. Instead we ended up staying 2 nights because we were so ill (feverish, sick and fluey) only managing to scape ourselves out of bed on the last day to see the Taj. It was very beautiful (of course) so worth the pain!

Yesterday I noticed the Roly Poly on Ambassador Caffery Pkwy. behind Shenanigan’s (nee Bennigan’s) is now closed.  From my personal experience, the store was never busy.  The Oil Center Roly Poly on Coolidge Blvd. is still open and hoppin’.  The store is owned by Marcus Mire, who bought it about a year ago.  Today at lunch, the counter was full of big to-go orders, the location is popular with nearby oilfield and medical workers.

“Ah dis?” Since insects are emerging with spring approaching, we hear, “ah dis?” (what’s this?) frequently. On the back patio, the girls are making new friends — mommy and baby roly-polies.

These tobacco tins were issued by The American Tobacco Company in 1912.

This bird is an aerobatics genious.  Whenever we see him, he’s up there showing off his flying skill, and what a skill.  He flies as high as possible – my guess is around 20-25 metres high – and would turn on himself by rolling in the air – head first!  The  children would say the RolyPoly pigeon is up.

This was taken just before sunset.  It doesn’t look particularily difficult, but this photograph was a challenge.  I wanted to show the movement of the bird – illustrating this using an atypical flying position.  The low light and his high altitude made it a little tricky.

Baby armadillo - by Tom Uhlman/AP Photo

Anyway, despite my Asian-ness, I was born in Austin, and one of my earliest memories include a memory of an armadillo that used to live by my house. I was like, 4 years old, and if I happened to wake up really really early, I could sometimes see an armadillo waddle up to this huge ant bed we had behind our house to eat ants.

My mom later told me that armadillos can roll up into balls and protect themselves with their hard shells. Ever since then.. I just had this.. deep desire to.. just.. KICK IT!! just once. To see how hard it was, and if it could roll like a ball.
I was never allowed to fulfill this urge, and of course that has just made it worse. I’m just waiting to see my next armadillo… (just kidding. not really, but.. yeah.)

Here are some fun facts about armadillos that make them all the more cooler.

• When startled, the armadillo can jump straight upward about three to four feet into the air. Unfortunately, many armadillos are killed when they jump into the underside of moving vehicles.
• Armadillos can cross bodies of water in two ways. They can:
  1. inflate their stomachs and intestines with air and float across the water, or,
  2. sink down and use their sharp claws to walk across the bottom.
  They can hold their breath for six minutes or more!
• An armadillo always bears an identical set of quadruplets, conceived from a single fertilized egg. The initial embryo divides in two and those two embryos divide, in turn, into two more. Thus every armadillo is a clone of its three brothers or its three sisters.

Bet you didn’t know that!

-Jane

The facts above were taken from Everyday Mysteries, and Texas Parks and Wildlife.

My recent favorite breakfast (that I even had today too) is Nature’s Path organic flax waffles (2 of them) smothered with almond butter and manuka honey and then layered with slices of yummy ripe bananas.  This breakfast makes me feel on top of the world!!  It doesn’t get much better than this.

This was an interesting breakfast creation.  So I really wanted CCV’s Banana Bread Blender Cereal, but I didn’t have any frozen bananas.  Therefore I had to improvise.  I used frozen strawberries instead.  I was really wanting the cold, creamy cereal that I usually get when I make this.  The strawberries gave me that, but it wasn’t as yummy.  I think strawberries are more water based, so my cereal ended up tasting a bit bland and watery.  The banana usually makes it creamy and rich tasting too.  It was ok though.  It wasn’t bad enough for me to throw away and make something else, but I don’t think I’ll make it again.

Roly Poly ultimate veggie sandwich that I got to-go.  Once home I added some grilled tofu and liberal amounts of yellow mustard and vegan mayo.  This is our usual Saturday lunch.  Yum!!

Eric came to school for lunch, and instead of him bringing lunch to me, I packed us a picnic.  We had sandwiches made with the cranberry and stuffing Tofurkey slices.  This is the first time we’ve tried it.  I thought they were great!!  Like the package recommends, I put cream cheese, cranberry sauce, and lettuce on the bread with it.  It tasted like the holidays!

This was a very hearty lunch that kept me satisfied all the way to dinner.  I put a serving of brown rice in the bowl and then poured the soup on top.  The avocado piece on top was a lovely complement.  A favorite lunch dessert of mine is endangered species chocolate.

]]> http://squirrelqueen.wordpress.com/2008/10/03/feed-em-fish-heads-for-feel-good-friday/ Fri, 03 Oct 2008 13:56:51 +0000 squirrelqueen http://squirrelqueen.wordpress.com/2008/10/03/feed-em-fish-heads-for-feel-good-friday/

After all the bailout talk and last night’s debate, I think we needed something a little light hearted.

I had forgotten how long the intro is on this video.

Your patience will be rewarded.

For more FGF, visit Ginger, Newscoma, Scout, Cluttered Brain, Sista Smiff, Left Wing Cracker, Sharon Cobb, GoldnI, MonsterMash40, LeBlanc, Hollywood Ron, Nashville Is Talking, Russ McBee, Beziat and Jag.

There may be more out there, but I ran out of time to look for them.

Happy Friday to all.

Going through my old myspace blog posts, I found one that felt like it belonged here.  I wrote this about a year and a half ago and the fact that I can read it today and not totally hate it pretty much obligates me to share it with you.  So, for anyone wondering what kinds of things could possibly make it into this blog… here you go.

——————————————————-

There is a phenomenon that a few of my friends and I have been noticing recently, and it’s scaring us. It makes us feel old, yet at the same time we realize that some of the changes in this world aren’t just odd to us because we’re into our twenties now, but they’re also negative. Very negative. It’s the small things that signal to larger disturbances in the basic foundation of our existence, and one tiny issue has given us very big worries.

When did roly-polies become such helpless losers? When I was a wee lad, I remember playing in my backyard in the middle of suburban America (aka Mustang, OK). The sky was blue, the air was clear, the smell of freshly cut grass and weekend barbecues lingered as small children played amongst each other, as newly liscenced teenagers drove far too recklessly down the narrow streets, as families rode bikes or skated together around the neighborhood and the nearby park. Life was simple and good, and if you were a child playing in the sandbox, or your mother’s flower bed (no matter how many times she told you not to), or the small garden in which you grew a few fruits and vegetables, there were loads of small insects which you could torture, annoy, or admire. Most of these had no choice but to let you do as you please, because they were generally helpless and had little means of escape.

Except for one. If you found a roly-poly, it frustrated you to no end, yet at the same time it fascinated you. Any other bug would wiggle as you tore off its limbs, or crawl hesitantly up your arm, or at least leap feet into the air to escape your wrath. But these guys just rolled up into a hard little ball, and there was nothing you could do. They’d sit there like that forever, and you could chunk them over the fence in a blind rage and the same little fucker would be looking at you the next day; taunting you, letting you get as close as you wanted and then balling up at the last second. We didn’t know at the time, but what roly-polies were teaching us that you aren’t always king of the jungle. At the end of the day, nature fucking owns your ass, and not even that dude on Man Vs. Wild could prove the roly-polies otherwise. They checked our inflated, youthful egos and taught us humility, and in a way, mortality.

But something has gone wrong in the evolutionary chain for these once god-like creatures, because their offspring have become limp-dicked parodies of their ancestors’ glorious legacy. These days, you find a roly-poly chillin’, minding his own business, and you think to yourself, “Ah, what the hell? For old time’s sake!” You run over to him and reach down to pick him up, and nothing. You give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe he’s staring at you stone cold, just daring you to make that final move, so you touch him. Again, nothing. You pick him up and he makes these weak, feeble attempts at rolling up, but like pre-Subway Jared in a sit-up competition, he just can’t do it. He’s dicked; just writhes around in your hand and looks pathetic. Seeing this is at once sad, infuriating, and disgusting. Seriously, the first time I saw this happen I didn’t know whether to cry, smash my other hand down on the sad fuck in rage, or throw up in the nearby bushes. I ended up with a compromise and weeped as I angrily did double-shots of Wild Turkey until I puked all over the bathroom wall.

This wasn’t an isolated incident. Originally thinking (and hoping) that I might have just encountered some sort of inferior half-breed (perhaps the rolies had gotten in bed with slugs or something), I called all of my friends and told them to be on the lookout for roly-polies, and to run the same test which I had and report to me their findings. The results weren’t good. In fact, not a single person I know has encountered a roly-poly that lives up to its name in the last month. Those who hadn’t already renounced whatever faith they had were thrown into an existential crisis, while the rest of us have pretty much crawled inside a bottle for good.

This can’t be good for the future of our lives here on earth. If roly-polies are no longer the great regulator in the eyes of our youth, we are likely to raise great tyrants who enslave the world’s population for the use of harvesting poppy or some shit, and then the polar ice caps will melt and the world will implode and we’ll all be reduced to tiny specks of dirty stardust floating amongst asteroids and comets and lost spacemen looking for a ride home, except there won’t be a home anymore so they’ll be equally fucked.

Breakfast came from a recipe in a NEW cookbook I just got in the mail.  It is written by the McDougall’s.  I found out about it when I went to CA for the cooking weekend.  I bought it off Amazon.  It is an all vegan cookbook with amazingly easy recipes with few ingredients.  They also focus on low-fat cooking, so there are no oils or fats in most of their dishes.  I know this is going to be a favorite cookbook of mine for a little while as I ease back in to work (well there isn’t any easing to it actually…I go back tomorrow).  Quick dinners make life a little simpler.  My breakfast was called Almost Instant Breakfast and is on page 3.

Lunch was the Ultimate Veggie wrap from Roly Poly.  I told you we go there a lot!  I brought it home and added some Nasoya sandwich spread (mayo looking stuff) to it.  In the background is a cup of coffee (fake coffee).  I learned about this brand at the McDougall Celebrity Chef cooking weekend as well.  It’s “coffee” made form barley.  It’s suppose to be healthier because it doesn’t have ANY caffiene.  I like it.

This was our anniversary dinner at home.  Since we’ve been gone, it felt so great to just chill at home and make dinner together.    We made another recipe from The McDougall Quick & Easy Cookbook.  This was Speedy International Stew on page 88.  It has 3 ingredients!!  (and hot sauce to sprinkle on top)  It was SOOO easy and perfect.  Eric made the wee salads with minced garlic and balsamic vinegar.  The cornbread pictured was cornbread I made a few weeks ago.  I had put it in the freezer for a night just like this, when we would be having chili again.  The cornbread I made from two recipes here and here.  I made it from two because of the ingredients I had and wanted to use and because I didn’t have a cast iron pan, so I made it in two hot pans, like the first recipe does.

Southport is warmly welcoming Coronation Street star Liz Dawn as she prepares for her new role as landlady in the town.

Liz, who played Vera Duckworth in the soap, is taking over as manager of The Falstaff with her husband Don.

The pub is to be rebranded as the Rovers Return as part of a franchise deal agreed with ITV. Liz’s fictional son Terry, played by Nigel Pivaro is to open a similar pub in Blackpool.

Liz will be joined at the Falstaff by friends Jack Diamond and Marie Ashton, formerly of the band Roly Polys, who have lived in the town for many years.

The soap veteran, who recently ended her 34-year run in the show as the wife of Jack, played by Bill Tarmey, told The Champion: “I’m really enjoying retirement, but it’s amazing how many people come up and say ‘you’re dead aren’t you?’”

“But it’ll be nice to get behind the bar again. This time, though, we’ll be serving real ale. On the Street it was low-strength lager.”

Liz, who was at the Falstaff to iron out the final details with current  manager Adrian Davies before taking up the job in August, also gave her backing to the campaign for real chips with real ale and went behind the bar to pull pints for the delighted locals.

And there’ll be none of those dodgy bottles of Skoe or Stellberg lager that they drink on EastEnders either.

“I think lager is bad news and so it’ll be banned, but we will be doing special offers on black Sambuca.”