Get Your Kicks On Route 66

Today we took Flat Stanley on a little trip along the road that they call the "Mother Road" - Route 66.

Here are some interesting facts about Route 66:

• It goes from Chicago, Illinois to Los Angeles, California


• It crosses 8 states and 3 time zones


• It is 2,448 miles long


• You can no longer drive the entire 2,448 miles of Route 66. Parts of it have been replaced by major highways.

Route 66 has many famous landmarks. We are lucky to have two of them in our area, and today we visited them with Flat Stanley.

The first one is a set of 3 statues named Polly, Jolly and Johnny. They are in Braidwood, Illinois and show their support for American Troops.

The other landmark we visited is much more famous. He is the Gemini Giant.

He is over 20 feet tall and is so famous that he is featured in lots of books about Route 66 and roadside America. He cost $3500 when he was purchased in 1965 and it took two big trucks to get him from California to the Launching Pad Restaurant in Wilmington, IL.

Stanley really enjoyed his trip down historic Route 66!

Laundry Day with Flat Stanley

Today Flat Stanley helped with laundry.

Sort of.


I had to explain to him a couple of times that the washing machine was not like a ride at the fair and that it wasn't safe for him to get inside of it.

After we got that all worked out, everything was fine.

Maybe when he gets home, he can help Scout's mom do the laundry. I hear she has a lot of it.

Mission "Hurry Up and Wait"

Vern's surgery, which was scheduled for tomorrow, has been rescheduled to next week.

They didn't really say why, but I have my suspicions.

We Have Had a MIRACLE!

Vern found something in the refrigerator.

By himself.

Flat Stanley Gets a Check Up

Today Flat Stanley went to the doctor for a check up. He was a little worried that he might have to get a shot, but the doctor gave him an exam and said that he was in perfect health!

He did have to explain to the doctor how he got so flat since the doctor had never seen anyone THAT flat before.

A Letter Home on Cinco de Mayo

Today I let Flat Stanley use my computer.

And we had a special dinner out in celebration of Cinco de Mayo! (Anyone notice the significance of our table number?)

I'm happy to report that Flat Stanley is now Not So Flat Stanley after he ate 10 tacos and had fried ice cream for dessert.

Sneak a Peek

We haven't been getting a lot of work done on the house lately but we've been pecking at a few things a little at a time and made a little progress.

Here's an unfinished idea of what the floor is going to look like. We only have this small section completed, and it isn't grouted yet. We'll be using a dark grout because let's just be honest here - I'm not going to be scrubbing a light colored grout to keep it that way. Been there, done that . . . I'm too old for that shit.

And here's a peek at the tile that we are considering as part of our backsplash. This would just be the accent strip (about 3" wide) with a neutral background. We haven't made a final decision, but I wanted to bring some amber and red into the kitchen for a splash of color since everything else is so neutral, and this works perfectly with what I had in mind.

Now, if we can just actually get a wrap on a few things before Vern has his next surgery on Thursday (May 8), I'll be a happy camper.

Want to See My Buns?

This is not a cooking blog, although you wouldn't know it by this and the previous post. I'm definitely not the best cook out there (okay, I can hear my family laughing about THAT one!), nor am I the neatest cook, which seems to be a requirement for a cooking blog. Also, I don't actually have a kitchen right now, so that probably would be a fairly good thing too if you wanted to have a cooking blog.


Sometimes I occasionally run across a recipe that I want to share. And sometimes I don't have anything else interesting to say. Today, it's a little of one and a lot of the other (I'll let you decide.)


It was a beautiful day today, just right for grilling out, and I picked up some fantastic ground round yesterday at our local grocery, so we decided to make hamburgers. However, I forgot to pick up buns and didn't want to make another hour trip back and forth to town to buy them, so I scoured the internet (okay, not really - I just Googled it), and came up with this recipe.


Holy Hannah These Are Good Hamburger Buns!

1 1/4 cups milk, slightly warmed
1 beaten egg
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup white sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 3/4 cups bread flour (I used All Purpose flour because that's what I had on hand)
1 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
Directions

Place all ingredients in pan of bread machine according to manufacturer's directions.

Select dough setting.

When cycle is complete, turn out onto floured surface.

Cut dough in half and roll each half out to a 1" thick circle.


Cut each half into six 3 1/2" rounds with inverted glass or a round biscuit or cookie cutter.


Place on greased baking sheet far apart and brush with melted butter.

Cover and let rise until doubled, about one hour.

Bake at 350° for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown.


That's it. Super easy and made with ingredients that are almost always on hand.


As you can see, after I rolled and cut my buns, they weren't especially pretty (I bypassed the "brush with melted butter" step)



After the rise, they looked much smoother (gosh I love my new oven and it's "bread proofing" setting, but if you don't have that on your oven, you can cover them and put them in a warm place to rise)


I brushed them with an egg white wash and sprinkled them with poppy seeds.


Ready for the burgers! Seriously, you have no idea how good these babies were.


And since this isn't a cooking blog and yet I'm still talking about cooking, I might as well add the recipe for the seasoning mix I used on my hamburgers. It's a copycat recipe for Fuddrucker's.

Fuddrucker's Hamburger Seasoning

2 teaspoons paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons ground black pepper
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon dark brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper

Combine all ingredients in a small bowl. Sprinkle on hamburger patties before cooking.

Don't be stingy with this - sprinkle it on and then sprinkle more on. And then a little more for good measure.

I like to make up several servings of this and keep it in a spice jar so that it's ready to use the next time we have burgers.

My husband calls me a kitchen goddess. I say it's more like a goddess without a kitchen.

It's So Easy, It's Almost Embarrassing

Cool Whip.

Graham crackers.



Spread thick or thin.


Freeze.


See? I told you. So easy it's embarrassing.

But if you are feeling adventurous, go for the gusto and mix it up a little with chocolate or cinnamon graham crackers and different flavors of Cool Whip.



I think even Vern could make these.

If he didn't, you know, have me around to do those kinds of things for him.

P.S. No jokes please about why I have all this Cool Whip on hand.

We Got a Surprise Visitor Today

Imagine our surprise when we opened our mailbox today and found this!

Our niece, Scout, sent Flat Stanley to stay with us for two weeks, but I think he's planning to stay longer from the size of his suitcase!

The first thing we had to do was get a scarf for Flat Stanley since it was really cold here today.

Then Flat Stanley went to Lowes with us. He looks like he is pretty warm in his scarf, but he wanted to go inside and shop with us anyway.

Later, we went to Kohls. Flat Stanley helped us buy some silverware, but he's a pretty smart shopper because he used some coupons.

Flat Stanley was pretty tired after his trip here all the way from Wyoming, so he's resting up now because we have a lot of adventures planned for him.

Robin's Hood - Day 3

Another hard day of labor by Robin the robin.

Office Space

Look! My new office has walls.

Sort of.

Organize Yourself

And then I woke up.

We're working on a major decluttering project in preparation for a large garage sale later this summer. Having moved from a much larger house into a small home, we just have too much stuff. We've had a couple of sales since we moved here, getting rid of the large stuff, but there was a lot of the stuff that we "justified" keeping. The reasons varied from "someone gave it to us" to "we paid a lot of money for it." Sometimes we justified it because we actually did have room for it.

However, after reading Peter Walsh's book, "It's All Too Much" (Vern just finished reading it too), we realize that just because it was a gift, it cost a lot, or we have the physical room for it, it is not always something that we need in our life, especially if it doesn't help us achieve what we want for our lives.

For example, the pile of organizing books.

I had them neatly organized and categorized on our bookshelves. However, after dusting them for the 10,000th time (it's really dusty here in farm country), I'm just frankly sick of them. Not one of them has magically organized my house or even given me the motivation to do the job myself. Not only that, not one of them has even had one bit of information or one new idea that I didn't already know.

So I had to ask myself - WWPD? (What Would Peter Do)

Peter would say "get rid of all of them. . . except mine of course."

And so that's what I'm doing. Some are being sent off to Powells and others are going in the garage sale.

Except for Peter. Peter can stay.

Robin's Hood - Day 2

And the count is now two eggs!

A quick Google search tells us that robins only lay one egg per day and that they usually have four or five eggs in the first laying of the season (which we believe this probably is since it's so early in the spring). It then takes another 12 to 14 days for the chicks to hatch.

So stay tuned.

Robin's Hood - Day 1

The Robin mama has been spotted.

And she is expecting.

We're hoping that the egg has been fertilized and that we will have a baby robin in a couple of weeks.

In the meantime, she has custody of our deck and back door.

Nuts

It's not as easy as it looked on TV.

First, drill through the two "eyes" of the coconut.

Drain the coconut milk.

Poor, sad little coconut!

OH NO!

Mmmm, fresh coconut.

Unfortunately, this is where it got a little sticky. Getting the coconut meat out of the shell was definitely a task that is best left to the professionals.

I'm waiting for the coconut fairy, or Alton Brown, to make their way to our house and finish the job.

Yet Another Trip to the City

I forgot to mention that last week we had to make yet another trip into Chicago for more broken stitches - this time in my other eye. The doctor removed several and told me to stop lifting heavy stuff.

He also suggested I might want to lay off the cooking and the cleaning.

I love my doctor!

We're Expecting

. . . baby birds.

A momma bird picked our unfinished brick wall just outside the back door as a good place for her nest.

. . . beautiful weather.

The last couple of days have been gorgeous, and our flowers have started to bloom. Let's hope that spring is officially here and that winter has moved on.

. . . a call.

We're waiting for the doctor's office to call and schedule the next surgery for Vern. He will need at least two more surgeries and will probably be off work for at least two more months. They are bringing in a special radiologist to help with the placement of the nephrostomy tube into his kidney.

. . . the unexpected.

Because honestly, expecting the unexpected has been the way we have rolled lately. I wouldn't expect any less.

Rock of Ages

Believe it or not, this is the newer, slimmer version of the mega stone that Vern has in his left kidney. The doctor was able to break some of the top of it off in the procedure last week. We'll find out later today if it was enough for them to continue with the surgery to remove it safely.

As a comparison, he has a normal size kidney stone in his right kidney.



I'm willing to bet that Vern wins the next time the guys get together to play the "My ________ is bigger than your ________" game.

Lock Me Up and Throw Away the Key

Things went well with Vern's surgery at the hospital yesterday. The doctor managed to break off the top of the stone (which is apparently shaped like the state of New York). We have to wait another week to see if that's enough for them to get into the kidney with their tools to remove the stone in large pieces.

Things did not go so well at the hospital with me, however. I'm apparently a big thief.

The surgical waiting room hands out beepers so that family members can travel freely throughout the hospital but still be reached if there is news about their loved ones. I received my beeper and then shoved it in my knitting bag.

It wasn't until later that night when I received a call from the hospital looking for their beeper that I even gave it a second thought.

I have to go back to the hospital today. I'm a little worried about that. We all know how much a hospital charges for something as simple as an aspirin. I'll probably get the death penalty for stealing a beeper.

It might be time to start knitting a pair of these.

I'll Take Kidney Stone for $100,000 Please

Yes, I know that I'm mixing up my game show references, but what do you expect out of me at this time of the morning.

We're headed back to the hospital today for what is only the new "first step" in this whole process. They are hoping to break up the stone just a little bit to give them room to gain access into the kidney to remove it surgically.

The bills from the first surgery are rolling in. This is easily going to be a $100,000 stone before we are done. If we are talking $100,000 rocks, do you know how big of a diamond I could get for $100,000?

Fingerprint Me

I ran across the coolest thing the other day, compliments of my favorite sister who turned me onto the television show Divine Design.


It's called Fingerprint Art. I did some Internet sleuthing and found a company that does this (DNA 11.com). Their prices are a little steep for me right now (keep in mind we just overstimulated the economy), but I KNOW that I can figure out a way to take our fingerprints, scan them in, do a little digital manipulation, have them printed out on canvas, and then mount them on an artist's canvas.

What a unique and personal touch to add to your home.

They also do DNA art from your own personal DNA scan.

I think I'll skip that one though. I'm going to have a hard enough time explaining why I want Vern to give me his fingerprints. I doubt that "Honey, I need a sample of your DNA" is going to go over well.

And Speaking of Stimulating the Economy

I did my own little bit to help out too.

I picked up a bit of yarn for some hats and other items for my Etsy shop.



And look at these awesome buttons I picked up while in Chicago earlier this week. You can't tell from the photo, but these are LARGE buttons (2" and larger). It's absolutely impossible to find buttons like these anywhere locally.

I think we have now overstimulated the economy, and it may need a nap.