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Our Daily Thread 11-21-14

Good Morning!

It’s Friday!!!

On this day in 1620 the Mayflower reached Provincetown, MA. The ship discharged the Pilgrims at Plymouth, MA, on December 26, 1620. 

In 1783 the first successful flight was made in a hot air balloon. The pilots, Francois Pilatre de Rosier and Francois Laurent, Marquis d’Arlandes, flew for 25 minutes and 5½ miles over Paris. 

In 1953 British Natural History Museum authorities announced that “Piltdown Man” was a hoax. 

In 1979 the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, was attacked by a mob that set the building afire and killed two Americans.   

And in 1980 – 87 people died in a fire at the MGM Grand Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas, NV.  

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Quote of the Day

“Get eight hours of sleep regularly. Keep your weight down, run a mile a day.”

Stan Musial

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 Today is Steven Curtis Chapman’s birthday.

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Anyone have a QoD?

69 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 11-21-14”

  1. Morning all. Friday night here so I managed to stay up later to wish you all a good morning.
    Still no teacher for my class for next term, but some slots have been filled so I am slated to teach kinder when I return. We also will have two preschool classes next year. It is exciting to watch God at work.

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  3. Good evening, Jo.

    Becca and I made cupcakes last night for her class’s Thanksgiving feast today. They have off all next week. L. Has school Monday and Tuesday, so we’ll head to Bandera next Wednesday (which means we will hit a lot of traffic along the way–Uhg!). We’ll return to Houston on Saturday, as I cannot abide the traffic coming into Houston on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. It once took us 7 hours to get home (it’s normally a 4 and a half hour trip). All of my siblings will be there, except for one brother. There are 12 grandchildren on my side of the family and they are all quite close to one another. It’s so special to see the cousins interacting, enjoying each other’s company.

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  4. What is your favorite Thanksgiving dish? Mine is my mom’s sweet potatoe casserole with orange sauce. It’s such a good recipe, I bring it when we eat Thanksgiving with Scott’s family, too. It’s delicious! The casserole is easy to make. The orange sauce is time-consuming, but not difficult. This year, I’ll be bringing the orange sauce and a couple of pies (one blackberry and one pecan). There will be 25 of us gathered in Bandera this year…

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  10. Favorite Thanksgiving dish other than the “standard” turkey with dressing, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie for dessert? (All of those are favorites, and so are the black olives that in my family were considered an important part of the meal.)

    I’m fortunate that green-bean casserole didn’t seem to have made it west of the Rockies when I was a child, or at least I never experienced it till I was an adult and thus old enough not to have to eat any. (My first two holiday meals as a married woman, that is what my in-laws asked me to bring, and I complied. The third time my husband told me that’s what they’d told him they wanted me to bring, I said, “Listen, honey, I don’t eat the stuff and I can’t stand the smell, and I just don’t want that to be my ‘contribution’ to the meal every time!” My mother-in-law made it, and I made something else. The girls still make it sometimes, but it got taken off the list of “things Cheryl makes.”)

    When I was a child, my mom made a carrot-raisin salad for Thanksgiving every year. Between the ingredients and the colors it strikes me as a perfect fall salad: shredded carrots, chopped apples, raisins, chopped walnuts, and sometimes some mini marshmallows. One year Mom said she wasn’t going to make it any more, and I told her if she wouldn’t, then I would, and I made it every year after that. Unfortunately most people in my “circle” don’t seem to like it as well as I do. (I’d gladly let that be part of my contribution to the family Thanksgiving, but the one time I took it, I don’t think anyone but me ate any. Of course, that really means they don’t know whether they like it, not that they don’t, but it also means there isn’t much point in taking it.)

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  11. Morning all. Husband has tax update conference today. We are in Dallas and go to Waco tonight. I am not too far from a few folks who wander around this website. Hey, y’all!
    I have lots to keep me busy. A writing assignment, Christian Library International plans for a Prayer at the Prison Gate gathering, and addressing Christmas cards. Also, I brought a book to read for review.

    Brother called to tell us part of Emory is shut down because of a bomb threat. I hope to get some details on that.

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  12. I LOVE carrot raisin salad. Of course a long time ago you had to grate all those carrots by hand and scrape you knuckles and damage your fingernails. Now with a food processor it is easy!
    Cheryl, I think green bean casserole was a test by your husband’s family. Easy to make and hard to mess up…except when I bought all the ingredients to make it last year because is is Youngest Stepson’s must have for Thanksgiving. I didn’t buy french cut green beans. In my view there are too many other good things at Thanksgiving than you waste any room on green bean casserole. 😉

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  13. I like carrot raisin salad and green bean casserole, though I never had either until I was an adult. I never had green bean casserole until my adopted children began making it because they liked it at potlucks. I did not realize people grated carrots with a food processor. I don’t have a food processor but I do have a grater.

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  14. Morning! It is supposed to snow here on Thanksgiving Day…I’m going to tell my daughter to make certain they bring their jammies just in case they need to spend the night! 🙂
    My favorite is the sweet potato casserole…we only make it twice a year and it is oh so delicious!

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  15. I really like Kim ‘ s cranberry stuff. I will make it for husband and me for our after Cracker Barrel Thanksgiving Day treat.

    Husband is new on the SMARTPHONE. He just called on break and said he had to discover how to turn it off. I had shown him how to set it to vibrate, but Amber Alerts were overriding that and making noise in the conference. Husband is having to learn some things on his own about the phone the same way I did. The DUMB (silently in awe and embarrassment) WAY. Just how stupid can a smartphone make a person appear?

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  16. I like all the dishes that have been mentioned. Only some people put onions in the green bean casserole.
    Some of the comics were really good. The first one was best.
    Do you have to learn to work a smart phone?
    Do you have to be smart to work it?
    I would be afraid to have a phone that is smarter than I am.
    The spell check doesn’t catch typos that make words. I had “I line all the dishes” above.
    And you would have laughed and made fun of me.

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  17. Smartphones make us all look really stupid in the beginning, janice. 🙂

    I remember many years ago when one of my first cell phones (an old flip phone from back in the early days) went off in a movie theater and embarrassed the heck out of my friend and me. I hardly ever used the thing — we’d just transitioned from pagers back then at work — and I literally had no clue how to silence it. People were actually turning around to give us dirty looks from the row in front of us.

    Turkey and Pumpkin pie, a close tie.

    I don’t believe I’ve ever had green bean casserole, but people sure to hate on it a lot — just saw an article recently about the hatred.

    Chas, looks like Halifax had the newspaper and now it’s been acquired by “New Media.” I hope this will be a good thing for the journalists who work there — no lay offs, having to reapply for jobs and/or enduring pay cuts. 😦

    http://www.hendersonvillelightning.com/news/3385-times-news-owner-halifax-sold-for-280-million.html

    I’m off to get my blood drawn this morning at the doctor’s office so I’m fasting until then. Hoping the appointment is quick, because I really didn’t plan to take any time off for it, I’m assuming I’ll get that done quickly and will then be free to zoom on in to work (but they may make me wait to at least talk to the doctor — the main event appointment for the physical, though, isn’t until Dec. 9).

    I have a lot to get done today.

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  18. Here’s a history of the green bean casserole. It’s apparently very big in the midwest so I can’t figure out why I never had it growing up (?). Even though we lived in California, my parents and all my other relatives were from Iowa (some from Minnesota) and our food usually reflected those roots. Lots of corn on the cob, with some version of meat & potatoes every night. 🙂

    http://www.history.com/news/hungry-history/the-origins-of-the-mysterious-gren-bean-casserole

    “…It was the perfect recipe for the holidays, as it was made with minimal ingredients that were almost always on hand, and it could easily be made the day ahead and reheated when guests arrived. And its popularity continues today, even in the face of America’s recent obsession with fresh, locally grown, artisanal foods. Campbell’s now estimates 40% of the Cream of Mushroom soup sold in the US goes into making green bean casserole.”

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  20. Pie. That is my favorite food for Thanksgiving. Pumpkin in not a favorite kind. The rest of the food I could take or leave. I do not eat dressing. I am not a fan of gravy and mashed potatoes. I eat most of the rest.

    We do not make green bean casserole and I never had it as a child.

    I make a cranberry relish dish with cranberries, apples, pears, sugar and cinnamon. No one eats much of plain old cranberries, so this makes more sense to me. It lasts for a long time. I eat the left-over relish with whip cream. One year one of my daughters brought homemade granola and I used that as a base for the relish and whip cream. Delicious!

    I still have the old flip phone. Last week the grocery store clerks were sharing an app for smart phones. One of the clerks was quite upset that the store would not be having print coupons anymore. I had saved over $50.00 that trip with coupons and she said those savings would end for those of us without the smart phones. They still seem to have them, so I am unsure if they will really end all those print coupons or were giving another option to those who want it.

    I know many people who do not have smart phones. They simply do not need them or want them. The clerk said she could not afford one. I think the store would be foolish to make such a move, although they do not have a lot of competition. There is a new super Walmart in town, so many may just start shopping there more.

    Technology changes at such a fast rate these days. It reminds me of what the bible says of the end times.

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  21. My smartphone makes me look stupid in the beginning, the in-between and until we part (hopefully it dies first).

    Green bean salad tastes good to me. Most food tastes good to me. I am like the Mikey kid on tv ads who likes anything. And I wear it well.

    So nice to be at an event, and now husband does not have to find a place to go smoke.

    Once a friend and I went to the 6:30 am gathering where Dr. Henry Blackaby spoke before people went to their places of work. My friend’s alarm on her phone went off while he was speaking. She was mortified. I think I did a good imitation of, “I don’t know this person I am sitting beside.”

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  24. Reading the history of green bean casserole reminded me that I used to go to church with a woman, a retired anesthesiaologist who entered and won many cooking contests. It was a challenge for her to develop the recipe and win the prize. The big secret was that she never cooked any of the recipes until it was chosen as a finalist! She just made them up!

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  25. Kim, I had a music class in college wherein we had to write new music to a hymn. Well, as a non-musically-attuned person who had learned to read music (basic level of reading music) but never played an instrument, I was pretty much just guessing when I wrote mine; I couldn’t “hear” what I was writing. My teacher did play through each person’s composition, and he told me mine was OK (not great, but OK). I think I got a C on it and then he decided not to count the composition grades into the final class grade, so I probably wasn’t the only one who got a C or thereabouts.

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  26. Chas, I didn’t know it was possible to make green-bean casserole without onions. But as someone who doesn’t like onions and doesn’t like mushrooms, and who prefers that veggies be just veggies, I won’t even put any on my plate unless it’s to be polite. (If a person is passing the dish to me and she asks, “Do you want some of my green-bean casserole?” then I know she made it, and I’ll say, “Sure, I’ll take a little,” and I try to get a spoonful with mostly beans.)

    But then, I don’t take gravy on my mashed potatoes, and I nearly always eat salad with no dressing . . . so why on earth I’d take perfectly good green beans and put stuff on them (and stuff I wouldn’t eat), I don’t know. I prefer plain green beans to green beans with bacon, too, and I actually like bacon. (But then, I think people try to slip onions in on that one sometimes, too. When they do, it’s inedible.)

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  27. No smart phones here in this household, except that one daughter has one for her work. I do have a camera I carry nearly everywhere, and my husband has a GPS he takes when we travel, but our cell phones are for making phone calls.

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  28. Aren’t a bunch of those french-fried onions essential for green bean salad?

    (We have one of the rotating casserole recipes our church makes for the local homeless mission that requires a can of french-fried onions and always forget which aisle they’re in at the store — the recipes repeat infrequently so I’m stuck buying them like once a year — if that — and I always forget, but think I will remember next time that they’re on the bottom shelf in the canned veggie area somewhere).

    I don’t like mushrooms either.

    Blood drawn and I was starving by then, so grabbed a breakfast sandwich and coffee on the way in to work.

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  30. This is cute: http://twentytwowords.com/can-you-recognize-these-classic-cartoons-just-by-their-skeletons/

    I have two questions for y’all, but I can only think of one of them now. I need a new purse, and my husband is inclined to get me one that is leather and will last a good long while. But he was looking at a site that sells them, and honestly I’d rather go into a store and pick them up than order online. Does anyone know which department stores have good, quality leather purses. It can be up to a couple hundred dollars, but not five thousand or anything like that. 🙂 He’s more of a shopper than I am, if anything, but I’d really have a store or two in mind to start rather than just “Let’s go to the mall.”

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  36. Not sure about Dillard’s or Belk’s, though I think we do. We do have a Kohl’s. Is Dillard’s good for that, Kim?

    Chas, believe it or not, I sometimes ask my husband if an outfit looks good together. He has a good eye. But a purse is just something you have to handle, and see what zippers it has and where. Plus, how does it feel, how long is its strap, how big is it, and what color is it?

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  37. Oh, here’s my other question. Have any of you, by chance, taken a photo of a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis? Really anywhere in the process, whether it is just splitting, the butterfly is pushing its way out, or the new butterfly is drying its wings. I don’t care what species of butterfly, but if anyone has such a photo that you’d be willing to let me use, could you let me know?

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  40. Wow, you all are so good at answering questions, how the one we’re batting back and forth in the family? What colors should we wear to have our family photos taken next Friday? Seven different small family units. (My family has two sub-units, the sons with their families), all together 23 people for the final shot.

    Go.

    No matching sweaters or t-shirts. They don’t actually want to match clothing. 🙂

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  44. Michelle, Kim beat me to blue. A lot of people like blue. It is a color of peace and calm. I was going to say to go with shades of blue, meaning whatever blues people have in their closets. I think that would make for a nice photo and it seems to me to be a CA color because of the sunny blue skies and ocean.
    🙂

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  45. We only got Smartphones because son was moving halfway across the country and needed a phone and GPS. He and I got them so we could text, too. My husband was happy with the flip phone but it died. He needs to know how to use a Smartphone for business purposes so it appears he is up to date like a lot of his clients. It is not our preference. But it seems necessary lately.

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  46. interesting purses. I always look for security here and never carry a purse. I am loving my scottevest with18 pockets. Of course here I don’t go out the door without an umbrella and need a bag big enough to hold one.

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  48. Time to get outside and burn papers. My haus meri didn’t come and I have lots to burn before I leave. I am cleaning out. Since I have files on the computer, I am burning the paper files. And they are files for the offering which the finance dept. would also have, so I’m good.

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  51. Michelle- Have everyone wear bluejeans or khakis, with the oldest generation in blue shirts, the next in red, the next in green, or some other color variation. Then, when you look at the picture in later years you can tell who is of what age group. In our last group shot there were 35 people from four generations, but we didn’t wear matching anything. Of course, the generation thing would have been odd since my brother has children the same age as my grandnephews.

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  52. And now I have a dilemma. A full-time staff job I would like to get has opened at a nearby Baptist university, but I have a contract at my high school until May. So do I go ahead and apply and, if I get the job, see if they can find an interim person for the remainder of the academic year? Or do I tell the high school good-bye in December and start the other in January? That would pose a problem as some of my students are taking the course for dual credit (both high school and college credit), so the school would have to find someone qualified to teach college courses. Also, Spanish teachers are very hard to find in rural areas, especially on short notice.

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  54. Cheryl, I can send you the photos I took of my chrysalis — I missed the big moment, but took a photo not many hours before — and others along the way, for whatever it’s worth.

    Can you text with an itouch? Is that different than an ipod?

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  55. On how much purses cost, a friend of mine works at a hospital and saw a bag she really liked being carried by one of the younger nurses. She asked how much it was, “Around 2? Or 3?” (meaning $200 or $300 in my friend’s mind).

    the gal says, “Oh, only 2, you can afford it! Order one.”

    My friend went online that night to check it out.

    It was $2,000. Yikes.

    Very nice bag though.

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  58. Emily likes to cook from scratch as much as possible. She came up with a way of making Green Bean Casserole with her own soupy sauce concoction, & it is delicious.

    We didn’t start having Green Bean Casserole with holiday meals until my mom decided to try it out, sometime while the girls were still young. To me it’s a newish tradition, but to them it’s tradition. 🙂

    Every Thanksgiving for the past few years, we laugh about the time Lee (who is usually an excellent cook) forgot he’d put the casserole in the toaster oven to heat it up, & the crispy onion things on top caught fire!

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  59. Yeah, all I got were the remaining shreds after the butterfly was gone. 😦

    But I think the last shot I took may have shown a crack or two, it really did look like it was about to come out — but there was no movement, so I was surprised when it had emerged in about a 3-hour time frame in which I was gone (to church on a sunday morning).

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  64. I loved the classic, simple Coach saddle/shoulder bags back in the day, not sure they make them anymore. But I still have my old one that I rotate out from time to time to use.

    Fossil also has some nice bags, I think they make leather bags but also some very convincing faux leather models that are reasonably priced.

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  65. Faux leather is what I have now, and I actually love the purse. The problem is it’s less than three years old and the strap is going to break at any time; it has been quite worn for some time. (And remember I work from my home, so this is not a purse that has been being tossed around daily for three years.) So we’re looking for something that will last. Me, I’m inclined to try to keep it inexpensive, and if I can’t get leather then I can’t get leather. But my husband is saying, “Let’s get a good one,” and I’m OK with that too. (My clothes tend to last for many years; I don’t buy something to use it two or three years and replace it, so I’m not likely to get tired of a purse in four or five years and insist on a new one.)

    I’ve heard that the difference in men and women’s dress shoes is that men only own two or three pairs, and they want quality shoes that will last. Women want multiple styles so they’ll look good with every outfit, and they (often) want the shoe to be in style, so it matters less how well it holds up. Well, I would far rather have a quality piece of clothing that lasts 15 years than three pieces that fall apart in five. I still own some clothes I bought before I went to college in 1989. So yeah, it would be great to get a purse I can use for 20 years.

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  66. BTW, Kim, I liked the purse in your link and I liked a different one even more, so I think we’ll try Kohl’s. There may be a Dillard’s in the same mall. We don’t go to “the big city” often enough for me to remember exactly what is there and what isn’t.

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  67. One of my favorite purses is a smallish/rounded shape, vintage tan saddle bag style, structured (stiffer) leather, no lining, stamped on the inside with Made in Greece, that I bought some years ago at a local 2nd hand store.

    Normally I wouldn’t really want a “used” handbag, but it was in excellent condition, very clean, looked barely used. And I don’t think I paid any more than $20 for it.

    I still love that little purse and recently put it back in service again; it’s got a long, thin strap and its small so it it works great as a cross-body bag.

    Doesn’t hold a lot, but is big enough to hold the basics.

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  68. I just threw out my leather purse. My brother in law had purchased it for me because he did not like the worn out one I was using. That was about sixteen years ago. It was not as worn as the one it replaced but because it was a nice purse, it looked worse with the wear it had. It cost eighty dollars, I think.

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