Combine Farm Machinery

Growing up in Iowa you acquire some words without knowing just what they mean.  Take combine.  Not combine as in put things together.  Combine, like farm equipment.  My family would go past all kinds of machinery traveling on county roads. I'd point at various things with huge metal circles, enormous rakes, all kinds of Godzilla-scale doodads and ask," Is that a combine?"  I never did get it straight.  Just for you, meet the combine.  It's short for 'combined harvester-thresher'.  Guess what?  It cuts (harvests) and threshes at the same time! Cutting we got.  So, threshing. The threshing takes place in a drum where a revolving cylinder just beats that grain right off the stalks. This machine is not fooling around.  I figured combines were a fairly recent invention but they've been around since the 1830's.  Back when they had to use horses to haul them around.

Farm Machine History Books
Source:  The World Book Encyclopedia

Sky High Heels

Stilettos.  Crazy scary shoes.   When browsing footwear I'm oft reminded of this quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Giles:  "Look at those shoes.  If a fashion magazine told her to she'd wear cats strapped to her feet".  I find stilettos to be little works of art; beautiful but, come on, surely not meant to be worn. On the other hand they're so ubiquitous that I had forgotten the original meaning of the word, to wit:  "a slender dagger with a blade thick in proportion to its breadth".  So according to Webster's, a stiletto is a deadly weapon.  Why all the interest, you ask? I just finished the new so not-cozy mystery Dead Like You by Peter James, and couture shoes that require a balancing act figure heavily.  In the weapon-y sense, but I'll say no more!  I don't want to ruin it for you. I would like to express my awe for the brave, the strong, the fashionable who dare to wear these shoes. I'm not walking a mile in them.

Dead like you / Peter James

Hellebores? No, They're Actually Quite Interesting.

Aaaah!  Hellebores!  Run! Never heard of this genus of plants?  Me neither!  Yet a friend of mine attended a class devoted to nothing but Hellebores. And she liked it!  What's the attraction?  The American Horticultural Society A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants describes the leaves as being 'toothed, (and) leathery'. Okay, uh huh, still don't like them.  Also 'all parts may cause severe discomfort if ingested and the sap may irritate skin on contact'. So informative, the AHS. And encouraging!  The actual good news is some Hellebores are very pretty, like December Dawn and Peggy Ballard. Aaaaah. Don't they sound nice?  But a whole class. Maybe to make sure you Dont-touch-those!!

The American Horticultural Society A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants

East Side Book Sale - All New! Starts Tomorrow!

The East Side Library, 2559 Hubbell Avenue, is holding a book sale with so much fun stuff you will be agog.  If you still use your VCR it's your lucky day - hundreds of tapes!  Chockfull of kids' books and some recent encyclopedia sets!  Then apparently someone who was a member of a science fiction book club donated a mess of SF books.  You just never know what you'll find at a library book sale.  How about a plastic carrying case with 45's in it?  My sister's friend Jeanne had one of these.  It was pink and she had the record 'Judy in Disguise (with glasses)'. How I envied her.  On the last day of the sale the price is $2 per bag. So you definitely want to go twice!

East Side Library's Annual Book Sale at 2559 Hubbell Avenue.

Saturday April 9th - tomorrow!- through Saturday April 16.

Hours:

Saturday 10 AM -5 PM

Sunday CLOSED

Monday through Thursday 10 AM- 8PM

Friday 1 PM - 6 PM

Saturday 10 AM -5 PM  Bag Day!

Carssss

I can point to any car on the road and my husband knows what it is.  This is like magic to me.  He is a car fiend and his favorite magazine is Automotive News.  Oh my gosh, he can find out 'North American car and truck production from January to March 27 2011'. Heeaaaven!.  There were 18,836 Chevy Acadias manufactured in those 3 months. Don't you feel fulfilled now?  No?  That's because you need to go through the whole magazine, silly.  Hey, you can also read about dealer incentives! In one convenient package!  Find out what it feels like to touch glossy paper again.  Aaaaah.

Automotive News

Couldn't be Cheaper Fudge

The one kind of fudge I can make bears no resemblance to the creamy squares found at candy stores.  It's simple to make but can be messed up if you try really hard.  Sometimes as a kid I forgot to beat the stuff and the result totally looked like the Blob.  You know, the Blob from the original black and white movie, when it oozed through the vents at the theater.  It was gross but I ate it anyway.  Um, fudge!  Now you try -
3 cups sugar

2/3 cup cocoa  powder

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup milk

1/3 stick butter

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

In a saucepan mix sugar, cocoa and salt.  Add milk and stir. 

Turn the burner on medium and cook until the mixture boils, stir it sometimes. I watch it boil really high and foamy then stir until it boils down.  Now here's the tricky part.  "Cook to the soft ball stage".  Raise your hand if you've ever tried this. Now both of you can put your hands down.  Get a glass of cold water, drip some fudge mixture in then put your hand in the glass, grab the stuff and try to roll it in a ball. Oh, and don't put too much water in the glass or it will spill out when you put your hand in.  Forgot that part.  If it rolls into a nice squishy ball you're gold. Now take the pan off the burner.  Add the butter and vanilla then beat the fudge until it starts to get really thick.  Unless you want the Blob effect.  Pour out onto a buttered plate. By the time you've licked the spoon and scraped every molecule of fudge out of the pan the fudge should be ready!
Now if you'd like to make actual good fudge, here are some handy resources:
Fudge Cookbooks

Shoofly Doesn't Bother Me At All

I was looking over a sheet of vintage toy graphics and the page title was "Rocking Horses and Shooflies".  What? Shoofly is either a way of saying 'go away bugs' or it's a type of pie.  Nothing to do with toys.  Well, silly me.  Turns out shooflies are rockers with a seat placed between two pieces of wood that have been cut and painted to look like animals. Animals with rockers on the bottom, natch.  So then I wondered if shoofly pie was related.  Webster's says it's a "rich pie of Pennsylvania Dutch origin made of molasses or brown sugar sprinkled with a crumbly mixture of flour, sugar, and butter".  Yum.  No animals, painted or otherwise, involved.  We just have the oddest language.  Ain't it fun?

Buddhism

First I'm mixed up about how to spell Buddhism.  I know, pathetic.  The 'h' seems to float, does it go after the B, after the u, no, it's after the dd.  Yeah, I'll retain that about 5 minutes.  Then I discover that Buddhism is not a uniform belief system, there are different kinds of Buddhism!  (I'd take credit for spelling it right 3 times in a row but I'm copying and pasting.) They are: The Therevada that emphasizes personal salvation through your own efforts and is the oldest of the disciplines; The Mahayana, whose adherents' goal is to become Buddhas themselves - their tradition includes the bodisatva, one who delays nirvana in order to help others.  I have on occasion been able to impress people because I can pronounce this, but I'm just a Steely Dan fan. Then there's The Vajrayana who are mostly Mahayana-esque but they include magic and deities in their religion. All this is of course hugely simplified.  Buddhism is complicated.  And has 350 million followers.  Who can probably spell it.

Source:  World Book Encyclopedia.  That's right.  Still one of the best resources in the biz.

Buddhism Books

North Side Booksale - Shop Early Shop Often!

North Side Library, at 3516 Fifth Avenue, will have a fabulous booksale pre-sale for the low low admission price of $5! Yes, for a mere sawbuck you can be among the hoi-polloi and get first shot at all the goodies! When does this happen, you ask? Saturday April 2 from 12-3. The actual library isn't open, but you can shop! For those of you more like me, the regular week-long sale starts Monday April 9th and runs through Saturday April 16th. The hours for that week are:

Mon: 12 PM - 8 PM

Tue-Wed: 10 AM - 6 PM

Thu: CLOSED

Fri : 10 AM - 6 PM

Sat: 10 AM - 5 PM

Sun: CLOSED

North Side Library has p-lenty to sell: Books, Media, Magazines & Paperbacks for all Ages! Shop all week!