Breakfast for Breakfast: Fly on the Wall

  

Welcome to our monthly Fly on the Wall, a blog post written in snippets. Marcia, Diane, and I invite you to catch a glimpse of what you’d see if you were a fly on the wall in our homes, at our writing desks, and in our worlds. Come on in, buzz around, see what we've been up to. Bet you laugh! 

PurDude comes home for a few weeks each year right around now, from just before Thanksgiving to the beginning of December. I always serve his favorite meals, snacks, ad desserts. It's a lot, so I start stocking up on the groceries I'll need ahead of time.

Me: I was talking to PurDude, we haven't had bacon wrapped fillets in a really long time. I'm going to add them to the menu this year.

Hubs: Sounds good to me, I love them, and we haven't had them in a while.

Me: Well, they're super expensive. 

Hubs: All meat is expensive.

Me: Yeah, but the bacon wrapped fillets cost a fortune, so will the prime rib we always get when he's home. And those thick rib eyes aren't cheap either.

Hubs: You only live once.
Me: I'm pretty sure the next part of that quote isn't "so you may as well eat all the meats."

It's rare that I get the chance to see all of the sports teams I want to see. Often, streaming channels buy the rights to a specific game, a channel we may or may not have. And it's difficult, in the Midwest, to pretty much ever get to see a Patriots game. But one Thursday:

Me: This is going to be a fun weekend, on Friday, the Purdue basketball game is streaming on a channel we have, on Saturday, Purdue football is on a channel we get, and we actually get the Patriots game on Sunday.

Hubs: That'll be three great days.

Me: Yeah! I'll probably lose my voice by Monday.

Hubs: So four great days. 

Sometimes you just need to limerick. Am I right?

There once was a woman from Boston, 

her baking obsession, got lost in,

she made some mistakes,

like completely flat cakes,

but perhaps that fact best be forgotten.

There once was a moron named trump,

whose actual surname is Dumpf,

teamed up with some jerks,

immorality among their quirks,

who say "how high" when dumpf says to jump.

In the spirit of the old saying "glutton for punishment," we were watching a Purdue football game, and they were playing the #1 team. 

During the game, they showed the Big Ten rankings.

Hubs: Poor Purdue, they're in last place.

Me: Yeah, but there's good news.

Hubs: How do you get good news out of being in last place?
Me: They're not in last place, they're tied for last place.

Hubs: As good news goes, that's a stretch.

You know that saying "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade?"

Sure hope those Purdue players like lemonade. A whole lot.

I don't eat breakfast, I'm a coffee in the morning girl. My family does, but none of them cook, so I always have bread, bagels, English muffins, an assortment of cereals, and oatmeal packets on hand. They know to fend for themselves.

But I do love breakfast, so I make it for dinner now and then, which makes everyone happy, including me.

I had an idea for a new recipe, a Breakfast Club Sandwich, which I thought might be a good brunch idea for over the holidays when I'd have a full house. I decided to give it a try yesterday morning.

Hubs came into the kitchen, went to grab a bowl for cereal and noticed I was cooking.

Hubs: What are you making?
Me: Breakfast.

Hubs: In the morning? 

Breakfast Club Sandwich

I have to admit, I'm a little freaked out. OK, a lot. I know all of our electronics can and are being use to track us and to target us. There is no such thing as privacy or anonymity.

But what happened last night took targeting to a whole new level.

I was in my room, flipping through the channels when I noticed a message in the lower left corner of the screen. It jarred me. I moved on with my channel surfing and found a show to watch.

Later, flipping through the channels again, although a different show was on, the message was there again. Now I'm starting to get concerned.

I took a picture with my cell phone, then googled the channel and the message. Nothing.

So, this is meant for me? And this is no subliminal message. Far from it, it's downright overt.

Should I make a run for it? Pull my sim card out of my phone and crush it, dye my hair, start wearing a ball cap, grab some cash and head for the border?

'Cause I don't think the idea of playing sitting duck is going to turn out well for me.

 

I'm not a fan of AI. In fact, I've said that AI is the next step in the extinction of humanity. 

But further than that it has, many times been just plain wrong. And I've heard of friends tell me that AI has stolen from both their books and articles they've written without permission or attribution.

We were watching a Purdue basketball game and there were a lot of players who were new to us.

Hubs: Who is that on the floor, #17?

Me: I'm not sure, I don't know who that is either.

Luckily, through Google, a whole lot of information is right at our fingertips. So I googled "which Purdue basketball player is wearing #17 this season?"

Top response on the page is AI, telling me that no Purdue basketball player currently wears #17.

That's either wrong, or Hubs and I are sharing a hallucination.

Fortunately, the Purdue website was able to tell me who it is.

I need a little advice from my girls:

I was watching TV, and a commercial came on for a Viagra substitute. It claimed to be easier to take, faster acting, bla bla bla. They ended their pitch with the promise of earning you a round of applause.

And I gotta know, like, is that a thing? Am I supposed to jump up and start clapping . . . you know . . . after?

 

I went to use my laptop and it was purring. Loudly. Fortunately, I'd been texting with PurDude.

Me: I have a problem. I think a cat is hiding in my laptop.

PurDude: I'm going to need an explanation.

Me: It's purring.

PurDude: Does it sound like a fan?
Me: Well, yeah.

PurDude: Then it's the fan.

Me: I've never heard it on before, and I've had this laptop for a year. 

PurDude: The fan turns on when the computer does something intensive.

Me: I wasn't even using it. So now I have a bigger problem.

PurDude: What's that?
Me: What was it doing behind my back?

Funny, he never answered me.

I had tried out a new recipe, a dessert. It was so easy, had very few ingredients, was no bake, and was topped with a chocolate whipped cream.

I had finally set it up for pictures the way I wanted, took out a large serving spoon, scooped out a serving and put it onto a plate.

Once all the pictures were taken, I needed to taste it to be sure it came out as I'd hoped. Since there was some on the serving spoon, I just took a big mouthful off of the spoon.

The doorbell rang. Perfect timing, I hate when I'm distracted while taking pictures, but I was done.

I answered the door, the salesman gave his spiel, all the while giving me a strange look. Whatever.

I declined, shut the door, and as I was walking away, glanced in the mirror next to the door.

Those strange looks? They probably had something to do with the big blob of whipped chocolate on the end of my nose.

Good thing I'll never have to face him again.

 

Now click on the links below and see what my friends have to share:

Menopausal Mother 

On the Border

Breakfast Club Sandwich

                                                                       ©www.BakingInATornado.com

Printable Recipe

Ingredients (per sandwich):

3 slices bread

2 TBSP butter

1 TBSP green onions, chopped

1 TBSP red pepper, chopped

2 eggs

2 TBSP milk

2 slices sharp cheddar cheese

2 pieces bacon

Directions:
*Preheat oven to a warm temperature, 200 degrees.

*Toast the bread. Butter them all on one side. Place in the oven to keep warm.

*Melt the remaining butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the green onions and red pepper. Cook and stir until they soften, about a minute or 2. While the vegetables are in the pan, whisk 1 of the eggs with the milk. Add to the pan.

*Omelet style, cook the eggs, flipping once. Fold into quarters.

*Place one slice of toast, butter side up, onto an oven safe serving plate. Top with the omelet, then one slice of cheese, a second slice of toast, and the second slice of cheese. Return to the oven and keep warm.

*In the same skillet, cook the bacon. Drain, cut in half, place on top of the the second slice of cheese on the sandwich. Keep warm.

*In the same skillet again, fry the egg to your liking. Place it on the bacon, top with your final slice of toast (butter side down), cut into quarters (add long toothpicks if you want, to hold the sandwich together) and serve.

Fingernail Fright: Fly on the Wall

 

Welcome to our monthly Fly on the Wall, a blog post written in snippets. Marcia, Diane, and I invite you to catch a glimpse of what you’d see if you were a fly on the wall in our homes, at our writing desks, and in our worlds. Come on in, buzz around, see what we've been up to. Bet you laugh! 

I buy a bag or two of candy each week leading up to Halloween. I dump it into a big bowl that I store on the top shelf of one of my kitchen cabinets. This is a habit I got into when the kids were little and I felt the need to hide the bowl so I'd have something to give out on the night of the 31st.

Because I can't reach the bowl, when I'm putting the groceries away, Hubs, who's over a foot taller than me, pulls the bowl down for me. I add the candy packets, and he puts it back up on the shelf. He doesn't have a sweet tooth, so there's nothing to worry about with him.

But, as everyone knows, I do. So one Sunday afternoon, I pulled one of our counter stools over to the other side of the counter. I was standing precariously on the swivel stool, with that big candy bowl in my hands, when Hubs walked in.

And let me tell you, there is just no rational way to explain this away. Believe me, I tried.

Caught. With my hand in the proverbial cookie candy jar.

We'd been having trouble with our fridge ice maker, we couldn't get cubes or shaved ice to come out. Hubs and I decided to pull the ice bucket out of the freezer to see if it needed to be cleaned out. We could not remove it. It seemed like it was frozen in there.

For 2 days we used a kabob skewer down into the bucket and a knife up around the edges to try to get it out. Finally, after the second day, Hubs was able to release one side. Just one side. Great, so now we had one side sticking out and the other still stuck.

Which was the point at which Hubs kinda gave up.

But I was not going to be beat by a bucket. So, day after day, using the skewer and the knife, I tried to chip away at the ice as best I could. And eventually, I actually got it out.

Me: Good thing I'm tenacious.

Hubs: You're like a dog with a bone.

Me (not liking being referred to as a dog): I'm tenacious.

Hubs: I know, when you decide to do something, you are dogged.

Me (teeth clenched): Tenacious.

Later on, heading towards dinner time, Hubs came into the den. I was laying on the couch watching TV.

Hubs: What's for dinner.

Me: Nothing.

Hubs: Nothing?

Me: I think we're just going to let this sleeping dog lie.

Listen, he made his bed . . .

The temperature this month had been big jumps up and down. It was still hot summer weather, then it got cool, then it got hot again and stayed that way until just a few days ago, when it started cooling off again.

Hubs was in the den, and I was walking towards him when I stopped and did a double take. 

Me: I think Mother Nature has lost her damn fool mind.

Hubs: What do you mean?
Me: Come here and look at this, in the neighbor's yard:

Directly to the left of a shrub whose leaves had turned gold for the fall, was a lilac, blooming again like in the spring.

Poor trees, a lot like us humans, have no idea what season it's going to be from one day to the next.

I'm pretty good at math. Algebra was actually one of my best subjects.

So, it's not what I expected, to ask you all to help me understand this. Is there such a thing as weather math? Equations that only apply to weather?

Looking at the forecast for tomorrow, I see that they say there is a 50% chance of rain. Wondering if that's going to happen right when I plan to use the grill, I go through the hour-by-hour forecast, and just as I'd figured, the only chance of rain all day is at 5:00pm.

But here's the confusing part: the chance of rain at 5:00 is 35%. Is it just me, or does that not compute? If the only chance of rain is a 35% chance at 5:00, how can there be a 50% chance of rain tomorrow?

I was watching a recipe video on FB, and I have all kinds of questions.

Like, what do you keep in your kitchen drawers?

And do you groom while cooking?

The woman was making a recipe, and while the ingredients were in the waffle maker, she opened the kitchen drawer just below her counter, pulled out a hairbrush, and started brushing her hair. At one point, she put the hairbrush down on the counter to check whether the food was cooked.

I mean, did she somehow confuse her kitchen for her bathroom? Does she regularly have hairbrush emergencies requiring her to keep one in her utensil drawer? Someone explain this to me.

Oh, and btw, in case you were wondering, no hairbrushes were anywhere near my kitchen during the baking of this cake.

Cinnamon Pumpkin Cake with Spiced Cream Cheese Frosting

It's October. I don't go all out with decorations and spooky foods and Halloween inspired blog posts like I did when the kids were little. But I did want to add a few scary stories to today's Fly on the Wall.

And I gotta tell you, there's nothing scarier than thinking you're losing your mind.

Case in point:

I was mixing up a chicken pasta salad for dinner. Among the vegetables I was including, were snap peas. I'd just come home with a bag of them from the store. So I added them, grabbed a twist tie from the kitchen drawer to secure the bag, mixed up the salad and placed it in the fridge to marinate.

It's a really good thing I needed a plastic sandwich bag a few hours later. They were in the same drawer as the twist ties.

And there they were. Nestled on top of the basket of twist ties.

My bag of snap peas.

Boo! 

And boo hoo.

 

And then there were the gremlins. Showing up a week early, but making their presence known:

I was using all of my electronics a few weeks ago when, all of a sudden Google stopped working. I could not access my email, Google docs, Blogger, and even couldn't {{gasp}} google anything. It was the same on my laptop, my cell phone, and my iPad. This is a big problem.

Hubs was having no trouble at all. He even googled google, asking if it was having issues. AI told him "no, we're good."

I was feeling targeted.

I deleted my history and cache, then spent a year re-signing into everything. I turned all electronics off, then on again. Nothing worked.

I went into every nook and cranny of my Google account to see if there was a security issue with the account. Nothing.

I frantically tried to figure out work-arounds: Bing for "googling" questions, then I somehow get email semi-working, but only on my iPad. Blogger would work, as long as I had about 10 minutes for each page to open. No idea what to do about my Google docs, which is where I house all of my printable recipes.

I spent 3 hours on this. Three hours!

PurDude texted me to turn my VPN off to see if that made a difference. I couldn't imagine this was a VPN issue, I've had this VPN on for years. But yes, turned the VPN off and got into my email. I could even ask Google a question. Like WTF?

But once I put the VPN back on, I lost all access again. I have to use a VPN, because without one we get hacked. We'd already been dropped by our original internet provider, we can't lose this one too.

Then, after dinner, I was showing College Boy what happens when I try to retrieve my email and, abra cadabra, there it was. All of it. Email, Google search engine, Google docs, and Blogger, all working like nothing ever happened.

You'd think I'd be thrilled, and I was happy but . . . did I mention I spent all afternoon on this. Three hours of my life I'll never get back.

And just to make matters worse, sage advice from Hubs:

Hubs: From now on, just don't do anything you wouldn't normally do.

Me: OMFG, I didn't.

Hubs: It's always you.

Me (pouring a gallon of wine into a giant mug): Yeah, it is.

Hubs: I think you have gremlins running around in your electronics. Your mission is to keep from upsetting them.

If only I knew how . . .

In the scheme of things, fingernails aren't really the stuff of which nightmares are made. Ghosts, witches, chainsaw wielding Leatherface, clowns hiding in sewers, vampires, there are a wholdelot of fright inducing images. But fingernails? Not so much Unless . . .

I went into my bathroom, and next to my sink was a broken off fingernail. I don't cut my nails, I file them, so I was surprised to see it. Hubs cuts his nails, but his sink is over on the other side of the vanity. And this was clearly a woman's sized nail. I must have broken it off somehow and not noticed.

I looked down at my fingers. Every one of them had a nail, not only were none broken off, but the ends were all still filed.

So yeah, fingernails aren't really scary. Unless you don't know whose are ending up next to your sink.

Seeking Vampires:

We were watching TV and a commercial came on looking for people to give plasma. They are offering up to $700 your first month.

Me: You should do that.

Hubs: Yeah, they'll probably tell me that my plasma's too old, offer me $1.98.

Me: Yeah, what we need to do is find a coven of vampires, bet they could do better than $1.98.

Hubs: Could be, but I don't think I'd like their method for plasma retrieval.

He has a point. 

You know what's really scary? Growing up learning about the Holocaust, hearing "never again," saying "never again," believing never again.

And then living deja vu through the trump and his immoral money grabbing sycophants. Watching the bigotry, the moral depravity, the bat shit crazies dismantling everything we stand for, we believe in, even getting away with breaking laws to do it. Losing, collectively, all of our humanity, our reputation, our health, environment, education, history . . . all under attack. And knowing, that he will declare martial law and take away one of the few things we have left, the right to vote.

If there is still any slim amount of hope left at all, it is going to take all of us. Not just nationally, but globally.

Because never again is now. And it is terrifying.

 

Now click on the links below and see what my friends have to share:

Menopausal Mother 

On the Border

Cinnamon Pumpkin Cake with Spiced Cream Cheese Frosting

                                                                       ©www.BakingInATornado.com

Printable Recipe

Ingredients:

box of yellow cake mix

1 (15 oz) canned pumpkin

1/2 cup pumpkin spice creamer

1/3 cup oil

4 eggs

1 tsp pumpkin pie spice mix

1/4 tsp ginger

1/2 tsp cinnamon 

1/8 tsp nutmeg

1/8 tsp ground cloves

1/2 cup cinnamon baking chips dusted with flour

4 oz cream cheese, softened

1 can cream cheese frosting

1/2 tsp cinnamon

2 TBSP pumpkin spice creamer

2 TBSP powdered sugar

1 drop of red and one drop of yellow food coloring

Directions:
*Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 9 X 13 baking pan.

*Beat the cake mix, 1/2 cup of the pumpkin spice creamer, oil, eggs, pumpkin pie spice, ginger, 1/2 tsp of the cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves for 2 minutes.

*Mix in the flour dusted cinnamon baking chips and pour evenly into the prepared pan. Bake for 28 - 34 minutes, until the center springs back to the touch. Cool completely.

*Beat the cream cheese, cream cheese frosting, remaining cinnamon, remaining pumpkin spice creamer and the powdered sugar. 

*Put 1/2 cup of the frosting into a bowl and add the food colorings. Frost the top of the cake with the white frosting. Pipe the orange frosting onto the top as decoration.