Cheerless: Cheer Up the Lonely Poetry

 

Poetry Monday's once a week.

You may have guessed, it's each Monday.

I don't participate every time,

But today I've come out to play.

My friends assign each week a theme,

Cheer the Lonely's what they chose.

Now it's up to all of us,

to put our thoughts into prose.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cheerless

 

He rang the doorbell constantly,

seemed almost every day.

When I went to answer him,

said what he'd come to say.

I'm sure he felt he offered,

what I might truly need.

Mightily tried to build rapport,

in his quest he'd not succeed.

He sure was persistent,

(and friendly as could be),

but when creating in the kitchen,

concentration is my key.

 

Aromatics Roasted Chicken Leg Quarters

Since he lived so close by,

I knew I had to be kind.

But if he didn't take a hint,

I just might lose my mind.

 

"Thought you might be lonely," 

his lame joke came off as plea.

My answer was to inform him, 

"I like being with me.

So no matter how many times,

my doorbell you may ring,

or the number of your pamphlets,

with you, you may bring,

I will not buy your lawn service,

I've got one, by the way,

Can I go without hearing from you,

for just one single day?"

 

 

 Wait!

Read more poetry, 

you're not through.

Some talented writers

are in this crew!

 

On the Border 

Messymimi's Meanderings 

Mother Owl 

 

Aromatics Roasted Chicken Leg Quarters       

                                                       ©www.BakingInATornado.com

Printable Recipe

NOTE: This recipe can be made in whatever quantity you choose, just increase all ingredients equally and use a larger roasting pan.

Ingredients: 

1/2 onion, peeled and sliced

1/2 red pepper, seeded and sliced

4 oz mushrooms, cleaned and sliced 

2 chicken legs

2 chicken thighs

3 TBSP olive oil

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp Italian seasoning

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

1 red potato, sliced

additional salt and pepper to taste 

1 tsp paprika

Directions:
*Line an 8 inch square baking pan with tin foil. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

*Arrange the onion, red pepper, and mushrooms evenly in the bottom of the pan.

*Mix together the olive oil, garlic powder, Italian seasoning, salt and pepper. Coat the chicken pieces, then place them into the pan with the aromatics.

*Sprinkle the red potato slices with additional salt and pepper to taste. Add to the pan. Sprinkle the paprika over the chicken and the potatoes.

*Cook for about 45 minutes, making sure the chicken is cooked through. Serve the chicken pieces topped with the aromatics.

 

Meet, Bray, Love: Secret Subject Swap

Welcome a Secret Subject Swap. This month 5 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts. Read through mine and at the bottom you’ll find links to all of today’s other Secret Subject participants.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My subject is: Tell me about the strangest pet you've owned.
It was submitted by Sarah of What TF Sarah.

 

 

I guess you could say a mule. I also guess that maybe I should give you some background.

 

I've mentioned before that I, for a short time, lived the Brady Bunch. My mother had 2 girls, my stepfather had 3 boys. Neither of us were willing to give up our "Alice," so his lived in (with her daughter, to round out the crew) and ours came during the day.

The house was beautiful, contemporary, which is my style, the whole back of the house was glass. The back yard was large, with a pool, a barn, and a rolling hill leading all the way back to woods. There were also woods to our left, and across the street. To our right was Four Corner Farm, a home complete with a barn, horses, and all kinds of animals. The youngest daughter, Lee, was my age, and I knew her from school so I'd been over there, although not often. Her mother was an animal lover, former horse rescuer, and you never knew what you'd come across there. A de-scented skunk, ferrets in the bathroom, anything and everything animal.

 

And us next door? We had nothin'. OK, so my brother had a dog that chased his tail till I got dizzy. Big whop.

But the neighbors' main love was, without a doubt,  horses. I'd walk up to the fence between our yards with an apple or a carrot and look into those big beautiful brown equine eyes and know exactly why their family had fallen in love with horses. Damn, I mean I got great birthday presents when I was little but Lee? She got a horse. A horse! And she named him (her?) Happy Birthday.

 

At the time that I lived there, though, I had just barely graduated college, was starting out in my first job and living at home to save some money. And also at that time, I fell in love with big brown equine eyes too, those of a donkey. Donkeys are, if you didn't know, gentle, domesticated, smaller members of the horse family. And one day, while snacking on a cookie dough/brownie hybrid by the pool, I broached the subject of bringing him home, see if he could fit into our family.

 

Cookie Dough Brownies

 

A little about donkeys in general, and mine specifically. He was not a foal (a young donkey), nor a Jenny (a female), he was a Jack, a male. He was gentle, though undoubtedly as stubborn as a mule. Not a mule, though, mules are actually the result of mating a Jack and mare (female horse). I know all of this because these are the things you learn when you live out in the country, your neighbors have horses and you have a donkey. Actually, that's a lie. These are the things you learn when you're writing a blog post and end up spending a lot of time researching jennys, jackasses, mules, and horses on Google.

Anyway, I had named him Pardner. As in Howdy, Pardner. Hey, if Lee can name her pony Happy Birthday, I can name my donkey Howdy Pardner. 

 

 

 

Just one last bit of pertinent information: donkeys live for quite a long time. So it shouldn't surprise you to hear that I still have that Pardner I'd brought home to meet the family all those years ago. 

 

In fact, I've been married to that stubborn ass for years now.

Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

Wandering Web Designer 

Climaxed 

Part-time Working Hockey Mom

What TF Sarah 

 

Cookie Dough Brownies

                                                              ©www.BakingInATornado.com

Printable Recipe


Ingredients:

6 TBSP butter, softened

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 egg, room temperature

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 1/4 cups flour

1/4 tsp salt

1/3 cup mini chocolate chips

4 oz unsweetened chocolate

1 1/2 sticks butter

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

3/4 tsp vanilla

3 eggs

1 cup flour

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 TBSP baking cocoa

Directions:
*Cream 6 TBSP butter with 1/4 cup sugar and 1/2 cup brown sugar. Beat in 1 egg and 1/2 tsp vanilla. Mix in 1 1/4 cups flour and the salt. Once incorporated, mix in the mini chocolate chips. Roll the dough into 30 balls. Place on a tray in the freezer for 30 minutes (can freeze overnight).

*Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9 X 13 baking pan.

*In the microwave, melt the butter and the unsweetened chocolate at 20 second intervals until smooth.

*Stir in the remaining sugar and remaining brown sugar, then the remaining vanilla and eggs. Mix in the remaining flour, salt, baking soda and baking cocoa.

*Pour batter evenly into the prepared pan. Press the frozen cookie dough balls into the brownie batter. Bake for 30 minutes.

*Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely.

An Unintentional Turn On

 

 

Wet. 

 

Not as in damp or moist, more like drenched, sopping, soaked. You could even quite accurately say saturated. 

 

But I guess that's what happens with a turn on. Or I should say when you turn yourself on. And you, apparently, like it so much you decide to do it frequently. Sometimes more openly in the afternoon. But also stealthily, in the dead of night when there's less of a chance of being caught. Always outdoors. Right in the side yard, as a matter of fact.

 

Continuing despite Hubs' diligent attempts to rectify the situation.

There are repercussions, of course. Not only will we have to pay the price financially, but we have also done a pretty good job of aggravating the neighbors in the process.

As unhappy as those neighbors are though, I have to admit that I am not ashamed. Actually, due to a lot of their deliberate behaviors, the reckless disregard of others during the year of covid, I figure they have more to be embarrassed about than I do. Even now.

I suppose I should start at the beginning. Which was at the end of last month, still spring according to the calendar, but summer according to the blazing heat. We had made the customary adjustments to our lives. I'd stopped, as much as possible, heating up the kitchen with the oven, preferring to cook dinner on the grill. We'd closed up the house and had the air conditioning running 24/7. Hubs had turned on the sprinkler system to keep the lawn from getting too brown. I'd also started making more no-bake, refreshing, frozen desserts.

 

 

Brownie Crusted Mint Ice Cream Pie

 

 

At the time, Hubs had gone through his surgery and it went pretty well, he was recovering and already off of the pain meds. My car issue had been resolved without us having to take out a second mortgage on our house. The contractor was coming to work on the siding of our chimney that the woodpeckers had damaged and although I wasn't looking forward to that bill, I was glad to at least know the holes in our siding would be repaired. All told, I was feeling fairly optimistic. 

 

Big mistake.

Because as soon as I start to breathe easy, you know full well the sky is about to fall. 

As I said, Hubs had the sprinkler system going and because it had been so hot, the lawn was pretty dry. Distressed, actually, and starting to brown a bit. In the late afternoon one day, he turned on the system. We have different stations so although each section is only watered for a few hours, the entire process takes many hours. On this particular day Hubs decided to just turn on the front and side stations, leaving the back for the next day.

Later that evening I was watching TV and realized that I was hearing water running. Worried that we had a toilet issue, I went to investigate. Eventually I figured out that the side sprinklers were still on. That can't be right. 

I called to Hubs and he confirmed that they should have shut off hours ago. He checked the sprinkler system box, which was correctly set to the timing Hubs had designated, but the side sprinkler heads were still happily spouting away. Hubs tried to shut the heads off, no change. He tried to shut the whole system off, no change. He even unplugged the sprinkler control box but the water just kept coming.

It was turned on, it liked it, and it was not going to turn off.

 

Eventually, in desperation, Hubs had to go down to the basement and shut off the water supply to the whole system. 

 

 

 

 

Fast forward to the next day. Hubs turned the water to the system back on and we sheepishly peeked out the front door. No rogue sprinkler heads had risen. Hubs turned on the back sprinklers and before we went to bed we checked to see that the system had done its job and shut itself off. All was well. 

 

Or was it?

 

I got up the next morning and was just leaving the kitchen with a cup of coffee when, guess what happened. You know, right? I could hear water running. I didn't bother checking toilets this time but ran right to the front door and saw exactly what I thought I'd see. The lawn was drenched, sopping, soaked. You could even quite accurately say saturated. The sidewalk and the driveway were being used as a bird bath. The neighbor's yards had puddles and the water trail ran down the street and probably half way to Chicago.

 

Sometime, in the dead of night when there was less chance of being caught, those determined side yard sprinklers had turned themselves on and were happily doing their naughty thing right through to morning.

And Hubs and I? We were decidedly unsatisfied.

 

 

Brownie Crusted Mint Ice Cream Pie        

                                                      ©www.BakingInATornado.com

 
Printable Recipe

Ingredients:

1 cup frozen whipped cream topping

1/2 tsp mint extract

1 TBSP chocolate syrup

1 tsp baking cocoa 

1 container (48 oz) mint chocolate chip ice cream

8 brownies, homemade or store bought

20 chocolate covered mint cookies

12 Andes mints

 

OPT: additional cookies for decorating

 

Directions:
*Thaw frozen whipped cream topping in the refrigerator, per package instructions. Place 1 cup of the topping into a bowl and mix in the mint extract, chocolate syrup and baking cocoa. Cover and refrigerate. You can refreeze the remaining frozen whipped topping in the container.

*Grease a 9 inch pie plate. Mash the brownies, then press firmly into the bottom and partially up the sides of the pie plate. Freeze.

*Place the ice cream in a large bowl on the counter.

*Chop the mint cookies and the mint candies. Once the ice cream is soft enough to work with, mix the cookie and candy pieces into the ice cream. Spread evenly into the brownie crust. Freeze for at least an hour.

*Pipe the whipped topping onto the pie. Decorate with additional cookies if desired. Freeze at least an hour. Store any leftovers in the freezer.