Roll call....watch cha doing this weekend?

Hey all,

I spent the weekend in the Delta, doing getting oral stories for a historical article that I'm doing for one of the endowed chairs at the university.  I bet i walked a hundred miles between Friday night and Sunday morning.  We just got home and I'm working on the article and getting my notes in order and hopefully will have time tomorrow to cook a little chicken.  We need to do yard work but it can wait. 

Hi Jeannie, So happy to see you pop in now and then.  How wonderful for you to be able to do all that walking!  Gary and I just started walking around the neighborhood last week and it feels so good to be out and about. Yard work is overrated, don't you think?  Wish I was like our friend Jan C who loves to garden and can grow anything. My best grower are weeds..... Enjoy your day off tomorrow Hugs

Well I chopped up a sack of potatoes and then sorted them all out in squares of foil, seasoned them and all that and fixed them for the grill.  I think I made 8 or 9 packs.  Then I set out on getting all the meats ready to grill and finally getting my food set for the grill.  I spent alot of yesterday on my feet and my roomie sat on his butt grilling, LOL and drinking.  Didn't seem fair to me.  But I enjoyed my food.  I had a half of a catfish fillet grilled, some potatoes that I put to much pepper on, LOL and a few bites of chicken. I am trying to bear this horrible heat and my AC is spitting water.  The AC has to be flat and can't be tilted even the slightest because of my 100+ year old windows.  So water just collects in the A****ilt he fan hits it and starts spitting it all over my couch.  I have asked maintenance to drill some holes or cut some notches in the AC frame so that the water can get out.  But for now I rigged it with a big window box planter with some screen so that half the water will drain down the screen into the plant box.  I wish I could fix the sound though, it louds and no sense in watching TV. My roomie went swimming today, I am trying to find a ride to Newport to go pick up my 2 new baby boy rats that came from an animal shelter in Mississippi. 

Sounds like you've been a busy girl, Evelyn!   Wow....100 yr old building?  Arkansas is NO place to be without AC, so hopefully the owner will get yours running properly soon. Glad to see you around, hope you're doing well. Hugs

My building was originally built in the 1880' and was later "rolled" into it's current place and was added on in the 1920's.  It was known to be the most ritziest hotel between St. Louis and Memphis.  Many famous people stayed here during it's high times, including baseball players, and I am sure some of the earlier silent movie stars.   It was made a National Historical Landmark I think the 70's and now serves as an apartment building with lots of one room apartments and several larger sized ones, like mine which is 3 rooms that the doors were knocked out that connected the rooms together.  My walls are also like 18 inches thick so definitly a safe place to be in bad weather, and my ceilings are very tall I have chandeliers in all my rooms, and my windows are so large that a quilt calculator could not even calculate how many yards of fabric it would take to sew some curtains.  I measures them myself a few years ago and believe they were something like 90 inches by 80 inches or so.  I love this building!  I love it's history, it's the perfect place for a genealogist like me.  http://www.argenweb.net/white/wchs/Searcy_Oldest_Hotel_Files/Searcys_Oldest.html

Hi everyone!  We've been doing the same thing we do every weekend this time of year, mow, mow, mow, lol.  Actually we got some brush burned yesterday that has been piling up.  The gardens are doing really well.  The corn and purple hull peas still need thinning.  The okra has sprouted.  Our tomatoes are growing fast.  We are thinking about using netting this year for them to grow up on but we haven't found any yet.  If we don't get busy it will be too late.  My 15 y/o son and I dug a gold fish pond last fall and we finally got the flowers planted around it.  We can look at it from the kitchen window while drinking our coffee and tea in the morning.  I'm working tomorrow to make up for some of the time I have missed with all the doctor appts. I had to go to getting ready for surgery.  I spent a few hours on the riding mower yesterday and my groin is still sore.  I would have thought that almost two weeks out from the heart cath that it wouldn't bother me any more.  Oh, well.  I don't know if I'm more excited about my surgery or one of my sisters coming to stay with me through it all.  She comes to visit a few times a year and we just have a blast.  At least I know she won't have any pity on me and keep my butt moving, lol.  Everybody enjoy the wonderful weather.

Hey Sybul, I'm so envious of anyone who can grow things!  I jokingly say I can kill a silk plant.  I pulled out a butterfly bush today that had died. They say they're impossible to kill, well, "they" never met me! Until I came to AR I had never heard of a purple hulled pea. Black eyed, yes, but not purple.  Still haven't eaten any,  but maybe I'll try them one of these days. I know you can buy them at the farmer's market but haven't a clue how to cook them.  Any suggestions?  The girls at work would flip if I told them I gave it a try. They can't understand this California girl living in the South. Take care

Just boil them with a little salt and pepper and a slice or two of hog jowl or bacon.  They are really yummy.  (They are really good even without the bacon or hog jowl).  They sort of have a bit of a nutty taste to them.  The hulls are the best part though.  You wash them and cover them with water and boil them for about an hour, strain the juice and then make jelly with it.  I'm not kidding, it is absolutely the best jelly you will ever eat.  I am going to experiment this year and try to make some sugar free jelly to see how it comes out.   

Honey, you lost me with the hog jowls!!!  Ah, NO, can't go there  LOL Maybe I'll have my friend at work make some for me.

Isn't hog jowl like a big piece of salted fat with little bit of meat on it?  I know when my roomie makes a pot of beans he likes to have a big piece of salted pork in it.  Sometimes he will fry it up afterwards and pick off the few pieces of edible meat on it.  I am a california girl to but I have lots of older generations relatives nearby so I keep up with the southern food lingo.  My great grandmother is still alive and she has a few siblings and sibling-in laws still alive.  Plus my roomie (Robbie) was raised in the tiny town of Floral by his grandmother and grandfather and his grandfather was already in his 70's when Robbie was born, so he cooks the same way as my great grandma cooks.  I always like when Robbie tells me the story when he was little, and his grandmother (who also adopted him when he was 3 days old) had a pot on the stove and he climbed up on the stool to look into the pot to see a pig head staring back at him!!  Now that's old fashioned!!