Peanuts! Get Your Roasted Peanuts Here!

“The relationship between peanuts and baseball goes all the way back to when a peanut company bought ad space on the back of scorecards in 1898.  The snack was a big hit in stadiums, and only a few years later, in 1908, the song, “Take Me Out to the Ball game” featured the line, “buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks”, which has forever united the two American traditions in the public mind.”   From WRAL.com

I can still hear the peanut man calling!

When I was a young girl my family went to evening baseball games at a local park.  There was always a man climbing the bleachers and calling out in a singsong voice.  He had a carrier full of warm delicious peanuts. The aroma alone was to swoon for.  And twenty-five cents would buy a little brown bag.

Years later I discovered I could roast my own peanuts and duplicate the flavor.

If you are a new guest at our house, you might mistake the peanuts for garden variety supermarket Ho- Hums, but if you politely taste one, guaranteed you will be asking questions.

Apologies if you are allergic though!

The recipe is simple but start with shelled, blanched, raw peanuts.  I get mine at a place called “The Cheese Shop” in Stuarts Draft, Virginia.  You have probably guessed they carry a lot more than cheese.   

And Bill and I are going there tomorrow to stock up!

Recipe for Dor’s Home Roasted Peanuts  Ingredients:  1-2 lbs shelled, raw, blanched peanuts; 1 tsp butter (or I use coconut oil); Salt to taste.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 
2. Spread all the peanuts in a rimmed pan (I use the bottom of my oven broiler pan).
3. Bake on middle rack for about 6 minutes and then stir everything around. 
4. Bake 6 minutes more and stir again. 
5. Repeat #4 two more times. 
6. Peanuts are done when they are a deep golden brown color. 
7. While still hot add the butter (don’t be tempted to add more than a teaspoon or they will be too greasy).  The purpose of the butter is to provide a coating the salt can stick to. 
8. Salt to taste. 
9. I freeze mine and bring them out in small quantities as needed. 

 

 

 

 

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Sneaking Back Into Cyberspace

Hallelujah!

Our Christmas tree is up, decorated, and the outside wreaths alit for holiday cheer in our Virginia country world.  Twinkling lights, red bows and a second tree on the deck complete the picture.

It’s definitely looking alot like Christmas around here.

And could this little posting mean I am back to blogging?

The wish is always to re-connect but that nagging urge waxes and wans like the moon.

I am still doing physical therapy for the dragging left leg with up and down results and high hopes for a sudden healing.  Exercise sessions that look like child’s play (including walking over a cone obstacle course on a leash) leave a body physically exhausted.

But each day I surf around the blogging world  for 15 minutes to see what all of you are doing and try to comment here and there.

Sitting too long is a no-no, but surfing around forbidden territory feels grand and I relish the stolen moments online.   What fun to be slinking into off-limits cyberspace!

But, today, with fearless abandon I am dropping in for more than a moment to say,  “Merry Christmas to all and to all a good  night!”

 

 

 

 

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Time Out for Wallowing

It’s Friday and so many of my blogging buddies are posting randoms.  I’m “not in the mood” though.

Actually, I am thinking it may be time for a Time Out from the blog that has been so pleasurable for so long.

Maybe it’s the winter blues.

Yes,  I do believe I am Wallowing in the Blues.  Great name for a song huh?

But, winter woes do not really excuse this current malaise.  There has been very little snow this season.

Yes, it’s cold.  So what?

Is it the light?

Why does my computer screen remain a daily confrontational blank?

I am already missing you cyberspace friends.

I’ll be back when the wallow is over.

 

 

 

 

 

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Pickles and Macaroons

Daily Prompt: Connect the Dots

Open your nearest book to page 82.  Take the third full sentence on the page, and work it into a post somehow.

“It wasn’t long before another idea came to mind: maybe I could sell some at the Women’s Institute meetings where housewives baked cakes, made jams, pastries, pickles and many other food items to sell.” 

I am not good at much.  I mean I’m not particularly talented.  So, when I was invited to join the Women’s Institute I was shocked.  Why me?  Were they desperate or what?

You see, the Women’s Institute is a club where the women actually compete by baking cakes, making jams, pastries, pickles and lots of other food items with an eye to selling them. 

I don’t enjoy competition.  Some garden clubs are like that too.  They compete to see who has the best flower arrangements.  I would wind up with one flower in a stem vase and that would leave me shaking in the composition phase.  That is why I have never joined a garden club.

What to do?  Should I accept the invitation to join the Women’s Institute?  It wasn’t long before another idea came to mind: maybe I could make some of my coconut macaroons.  They usually come out o.k. and even though my husband hates them I think they have a certain character.

So I accepted and now any time the ladies have a “cook-in” competition, I make my Macaroons.  They have nicknamed me “The Macaroon Lady.”

Like I say,” I’m not good at much,” but with twenty years of practice, the macaroons have made me famous!

Note:  The third sentence on Page 82 of my nearest book was from  Rita Roberts, my blogger friend’s published book,

 Toffee Apples & Togas, available on Amazon.com.   It makes for delightful reading.

Note #2:  I am not really famous, but the macaroons are pretty good.

 

 

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A Truly Lovely Award

Congratulations to Dorothy at Musings of a Horse Mom for receiving the One Lovely Blog Award.  Dorothy is a great horse lover and a riding diva with her own very special steed named Bear.  She also writes beautifully and posts lovely photos of Bear in action.  And thanks very much Dorothy for nominating Virginia Views for this same award. It is truly a lovely thing to be recognized by fellow bloggers we admire.  I am beyond grateful.

The rules for receiving this award are to post seven things you may not know about me, and to nominate seven other Lovely Blogs (to pay it forward).

Here are seven things you may not know about me:

1)     I once had two horses (Martini and Lucy).  They died of old age.  Lucy was 32!

2)     I live in an equestrian neighborhood.

3)      I love horses, dogs, cats, and almost any living thing.

4)     Autumn used to be my favorite time of year but now it is Spring.

5)     I am trying to walk 10,000 steps a day and have managed to reach that goal once a month. I need a horse.

6)     My favorite dessert is Crème Brulee, but then there’s ice cream, and chocolate, and…..

7)     People think I’m a great cook but I am really the great imposter.  My recipes usually have less than 5 ingredients and take less than 20 minutes to prepare.

Of course, every blog I follow is lovely (to me) and would that I could I would list them all.  But here are seven lovely blogs I nominate for the One Lovely Blog Award. Believe me, they are worth checking out.

Silver in the Barn

Jill Weatherholt

Always Backroads

Hope*thehappyhugger

Living and Lovin 

morristownmemos 

denobears

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Now is the Time and the Place

Daily Prompt:  Write Here, Write Now

Write a post entirely in the present tense.

I am sitting at my little corner office that doubles as a night stand!   

My friends and family say I should campaign for a room of my own – an office.   My own office?

I like this little corner because everything is right here. I know I have to keep it all neat or drown in a morass of “To Do” notes, ideas for blogs, and files that get are so full the drawer freezes. When writing right here I do tend to overlook choked files and other more mundane chores but time is irrelevant.

I am happy here in my little corner of the world and it’s nice that friends feel sorry for me.  Enjoying undeserved pity is a pleasurable thing after all.

Mostly I blog.  Doesn’t that sound awful?  Like Blllllaaaah!  I Bllllloggg!  It sounds nicer to say, “I am having silent but poignant conversations with a group of friends I love.” 

But I am happy in “this here corner” because I am creating.  Writing to me is like a jigsaw puzzle and I am always looking for the right piece to complete the whole.  Writing is my hobby and my obsession.

So here I am again in the same place at the same time (actually all the time) and the only downside is my backside’s growing so I am joining the “Y” as of February 1^st!

Back soon…… Pity-Comments welcome!

Your invisible friend, Dor

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Wanted: Blog Babysitter

Leaving my blog is tantamount to leaving my children.

It’s a horrible feeling to completely lose touch.

Maybe a reliable babysitter could be called in

just to check on incoming blog posts from my favorite people.

Granted, I have not yet met my blog-children in person (except for one couple I thought might be axe murderers but who turned out to be utterly delightful kids).

But the rest are out there –  my other children drifting around in cyberspace.

They need me.

How on earth can I leave?

What fabulous stories and photos will I miss?

Who will tell them their posts are wonderful if not for me?

Will they forget me?

I hope “gone is not forgotten”

As I fly the skies for parts unknown.

California here I come 

looking for a place to roam.

Please wait my friends – my children!

I will be back with stories of my own.

 

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Evolution of a Blogger

Daily Prompt:  Origin Story

Why did you start your blog?  Is that still why you blog,

or has your site gone in a different direction than you’d planned?

My son did try to tell me years ago how much he thought I would enjoy blogging.   “Hmmmmph!,” I said.  “I have no intention of putting myself out there in dangerous cyberspace! You have got to be kidding!”

Virginia Born and Bred – The Virginia Shopper

It all started with Julie, my friend who owns a local gift store downtown.  I was already writing to help her promote her products, but one day she called and asked if I would consider blogging.

That was the birth of The Virginia Shopper blog, an ongoing adventure and a viable connection to her shop’s website. That blog is blatant promotional writing with some useful ideas and fun things to look at and hopefully, buy.

Technicolor Day Dreams

Next I was intent on creating a personal blog in a collection of flashback memories of a lifetime.  I always wished I had a diary or journal from my grandparents to have known them better. Wouldn’t it be a great idea to use technology to give something like that to my own grandchildren?

After about a year of creating a mostly autobiographical blog, I converted it to a printed book which became a Christmas gift to my family in 2012.  I like to think some future relative will open the book and marvel at the lifestyle and thoughts of a long-ago ancestor.

Virginia Views

And now there is Virginia Views that began as a treatise on country living.  This blog, which has wandered considerably from its original intent (to make me a second Erma Bombeck), continues as a place to express myself in words that have been lying dormant in my head for years.

There is only one individual I aim to please with Virginia Views, and that person is me.  The fun part is discovering a collection of family, friends and a fellow blogger family who seem pleased as well.

I sense there is an evolutionary process going on here, don’t you?

It is the Evolution of a Blogger.

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A Ghostly Stairway to the Stars

Ghostly Stairway to the Stars

After over three weeks “on the road” or in the living room yakking with my visiting old friend, Janet, I think I am back to my favorite thing – blogging!  It’s a hard climb though.   I seem to have forgotten all my used-to-be creative urges and am in a ghastly funk.

Janet and I did a lot of driving.

On one of our windy road tours through Virginia, we came upon an overlook.   It was one of those places to get out, stretch, and gaze upon a lovely mile high view of the valley below.

 But, what really drew me to pull into this place was a set of overgrown stone steps that aimed for the sky.

Never mind the view!  It was only a view.

I was in love with the stairs!

 Can you see there is only a chimney at the top?

Who were the people who lived there?

 Those beautiful steps are a testament to what must have been a gorgeous home.

Who enjoyed that view before the highway and before all the gawking onlookers?

Was it a cottage built as a romantic getaway to escape the maddening crowd?

Was there a family there enjoying a Spartan mountain life?

Who were they?  How did they get there?  Why are they gone?

Coming back to blogging is much like I felt gazing at that ghostly stairway.

 Climbing back to my blogging friends and cleaning up the clutter as I go is the sudden challenge.

The foundation is there but the weeds have taken over and I can only imagine what to write about next.

So, I am starting with the first stone step in my ghostly stairway to the stars.

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A Blogging Time Out

I am feeling remiss in not reading and commenting on my favorite bloggers’ fabulous posts!

Apologies.

My old friend, Janet, is staying at our home for the whole month!  And what a joy she is!  We have known her since we were young “whippersnappers”, so we have a lot to talk about – not only remembering the good old days, but catching up on events we have missed since last we met.

We are also sightseeing and shopping.  I will take Pal Camera along to see what we can catch to add to future blog posts

But for the time being, my blogging addiction has been put aside.

I am in Pause mode.

I’s “Time Out” time.

Please don’t forget me.

I will be back!

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